From the Beginning This Was My End
by ChloeRulz
Summary: What begins as a simple political event spirals into a night of danger that threatens millions on the other side of the country. Jack/Chloe; Martha/Aaron, Bill Buchanan, Morris O'Brian, Curtis/OC:Cassie; Sequel to "The Constant" Warning for Sex/Violence
1. Chapter 1

Greetings everyone and thanks again for all the great feedback while I was going on my journey that was, "The Constant". The huge gap forced upon us by the writer's strike (Yippee for the writer's btw, I supported you all the way) gave me the chance to find my inspiration again.

I hope you enjoy this sequel as well but for different reasons. Every time I've ever written a story, it has been with the idea of challenging myself. "The Constant" was my first '24' story and my first delving into a story based far more on character and the human psyche than events or action. Other pieces I've written were usually more involved with intrigue and adventure and in the realm of science fiction. So, this time, in a somewhat sharp turn from the focus of "The Constant", a challenging plot and making real a singular setting are my goals and take me back to my more familiar realm of action and the very pale shades of science-fiction we get on '24'.

As always, the main characters are not mine. I have nothing worth suing for and Fox is welcome to any and all elements presented here-in, just call anything they might borrow a "thank you" gift.

You don't need to read "The Constant" for this to make sense but it would help to explain some of the deeper dynamics between the characters. In brief, the story was an Alternate Universe to the events after Day 5, where Jack is captured and tortured, but found after only a month, rescued from the Shanghai, and sent to a safehouse to recover with Chloe. Under the care of a high-placed and high-powered psychologist from Washington, he recovers emotionally enough to leave the safehouse, but instead of going with Audrey or Kim, leaves with Chloe's formerly estranged sister, a tough, quick-mouthed Vice Detective from the LAPD.

Jack leaves Chloe's sister's home eventually, to go stay with Audrey and resume his life, only to find the darknesses that have touched his mind and body will never truly find acceptance there. When an incident of violence explodes around him again, he finds Chloe to be…. Well, ;-) that'd be telling absolutely everything. I do recommend you check out the backstory but again, this will stand alone if you just assume Jack and Chloe are (finally) together.

So… exposition over, this time the goal in intrigue, adventure, action, and even the occasional bit of humor. I think you Jack and Chloe folk will truly love the first chapter ;-) but hang in there with me if you're in it for the action!

Welcome to the "24" Alternate Universe story: "From the Beginning – This Was My End."

Chapter One

One very warm night, the first after weeks of teasing, was all it took. Chloe O'Brian walked out of the house with a scowl on her face that Mother Nature forced from it slowly and surely as she stood on the steps of what she was still working on calling "my house".

Spring had erupted all around it this morning, from the azaleas under the porch to the cherry blossoms in the neighbor's yard to the new haze of pink and white that blurred its way down the suburban Los Angeles street. The pansies that lined the driveway never seemed to die but they were doing their fair share of competing for attention under the brilliant glare of sunlight. The flowers were part of the scenery that she could have resisted smiling over; she'd seen them struggling toward this day plenty of times before now. Her undoing was the two hummingbirds who, startled by her exit, stopped their mid-air duel a few feet from her face and turned to seemingly stare at her. They held still long enough for a multi-species glare of surprise then the tiny birds parted to resume battle elsewhere. The smile on Chloe O'Brian's lips twisted pleasantly as she dashed toward her car thinking about how she would sound explaining to Mr. Buchanan that she was late because she'd been staring at hummingbirds.

In the car, however, she stopped again, staring up at the house she now shared with Jack Bauer with a still fading fragment of disbelief. She shook herself and untwisted the skirt of her dark green suit, then pulled out of the driveway, past the empty space. As it did every morning, it told her Jack had already left, off to the campus that CTU shared with Pepperdine University, had gone to teach tactics at the underground facility there to students who were not on the register; some, in fact, didn't exist anywhere.

A text message warning beeped on her phone. She would check it when she wasn't driving, when she would need to start her day with a touch of reassuring peace. The message was what it was every morning: Jack telling her he was at work on the campus, that he was safe. He'd send another at noon and another on the way home, using the code they agreed upon the night before, pillowtalk for people who courted danger. She would answer him back and both would get on with their day without the shadow of worry. In the months that they had been together it had been the same.

CTU's parking lot was twice the mess it usually was; O'Brian muttered a word of thanks to whatever deity might be listening for her reserved parking space; being a department head had its small privileges. …and today she would have traded them all in to be down in Tech One rewiring a circuit board instead of being forced to play dress up and make unintelligible chatter at a bunch of government officials. She could have strangled Jack herself for being able to escape it. It wasn't supposed to be an official inspection, technically it really wasn't, just a chance to show off before a bunch of D.C. suits before the ceremony tonight… where the torture would continue over drinks and the waste of taxpayer money that was the Inter-Department Intelligence Symposium, held, of course, where they could get the most service and draw the least attention. They had registered the event as a convention of geologists, a good cover in Southern California even if she or Jack hadn't thought of it.

Chloe pulled out her ID and flashed it at the second security guard as she walked toward him and into the cavernous concrete mouth of the doorway. "Hey, Rick."

"Morning, Chloe. Ready for toni---?" The morning person smile faded off his face under the glare he suddenly received. He shrugged and smiled. "Hey, they sent me the schedules. Get through this and you'll be off for a few days, right?"

Chloe managed a smile at the reminder. "I might even come back."

"If we're lucky."

Chloe offered him a less sarcastic smile then. Rick was a good sort, too smart for this. How the hell could anybody sit in one space for eight hours and check IDs? She'd seen his test scores. He'd probably be more useful down on Level Two scanning internal dailies now that he knew the habits of the staff so well.

When she arrived, there was a crowd in front of her station, a half-dozen Senators she recognized from the news amongst them, each surrounded by at least two aides. A few members of the Secret Service were hovering around them all but focused mostly on the tall, Hispanic man who was the current Speaker of the House. She flashed her ID and made her way through the crowd with a few mumbled phrases and finally stepped up onto her station. That turned into a mistake the moment her head was above the crowd. Bill Buchanan, looking unhappily like a tour guide, spotted her with what looked like relief on his face. God, if he was about to turn to her for social help then the situation must have truly been getting to him. She started to sit down and yanked herself back up in irritation and duty when he began speaking.

"This Chloe O'Brian, our senior analyst responsible for tactical field operations and external override interfaces."

The crowd of twenty or thirty men and women in dark suits and demure dresses turned toward her on cue and she flicked a smile that translated to Buchanan as a glare, one he ignored as he sighed to himself, glad to be out of the fishbowl. Chloe wondered how many of them knew he had just told them she hacked other people's computer and security systems. "Hi,…" she muttered, forcing herself to smile, keeping the grimace off her face when she suddenly thought of her sister's suggestion that she work on a proper smile, hold it till she got to the clinic and then get her face shot up with Botox, just enough to get through the visit and the party. "Like Mr. Buchanan said, I run live support feeds for field operations, analyze satellite stuff – uhm… data, and do forced data interfaces."

The Speaker of the House moved toward the front of the crowd with a generous smile. "How long have you worked here, Agent O'Brian?"

Chloe bit her tongue, keeping it from replying, 'too long as of two minutes ago', and counted back. "Seven years, three months and …," she bit off the scowl at herself and shrugged. "A while."

"And you're the senior analyst in charge of field operations. That's very impressive."

Chloe managed a more genuine smile at that. "Thanks. Uhm… I… I hope you get re-elected." She stifled a nervous smile again and looked at the crowd of suddenly amused politicians, "All of you." Well, not Senator Paxton but she had enough sense to say that at least. Chloe's eyes left the now twitching glances of the Senators and the Speaker back to go back to Buchanan, begging a silent reprieve, only to see the empty spot where he'd been standing.

Stifling her panic and irritation, she put the smile back on her face and decided that if she couldn't dazzle them with brilliance, she would just baffle them with bullshit while Bill Buchanan made his likely escape to the men's room. She knew he wouldn't leave her long, for her own sake and CTU's, and so turned back to the crowd and pointed upward. "That's the DOD feed," she said of the large screen to the left, "and the one over here is from the NSA. The FBI usually activates that one over there if they get something we should know about in a hurry. It's kind of like breaking news on TV if you see it come on. Something pretty bad has happened or they think it will." She flicked the smile at them again and wondered how long Bill was going to hide.

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"Jump!"

CTU recruit Nikolas Mathison closed his eyes and, as always during his training, did as he was told, his stomach lurching as he fell backwards off the tall platform into oblivion. It lasted only for a few seconds and then the fall gave way to a gentle impact onto the stretched canvas that had been four yards below him all the time, at the base of the wooden tower that now loomed overhead. On its first platform, a compact, sandy-haired man wearing jeans and a long-sleeved black pullover stood, a tight, approving smile on his slightly weathered face with its weary and guarded but still kind blue eyes. He nodded once and headed for the metal ladder, skipping the last few rungs as he dropped to the dry grass, his eyes shielded from the sunlight by a pair of dark glasses that also kept his class from knowing which of them he might be watching.

The collection of men and women who had been holding the canvas turned toward him expectantly, eight of them aside from Mathison, a motley group who were obviously not field agents. Nevertheless they had held up their part of the exercise well, had faced their own doubts as well as those of the lanky, auburn-haired youth who had trusted them to catch him.

"Agent Simon, you're first for the next round."

The young black woman stepped away from the others and faced him. "Yes, Sir, Mr. Bauer."

Jack nodded at her as he leaned over the equipment bag and retrieved from it a simple strip of black cloth with a strange indentation cut in the middle. Simon closed on him immediately and waited as he signaled Mathison to join them with a twitch of his head. When the were standing side-by-side, Bauer turned to the other group of people who had been watching the exercise, the other fifteen field recruits who had already had their turn at taking the backwards leap. "Form two staggered lines, each of you about five feet apart, face each other. Agent Simon, go to the far end of the corridor they form and get where you can look straight down it. Agent Mathison, wait at the opposite end."

They moved as he directed and when they had finished assembling themselves, Bauer closed on Mathison and from behind, blindfolding him with the strip of cloth. The younger man took a quick breath but said nothing. Jack waved for the other group to come closer, "The object of this exercise is… trust. When you're out in the field it's your strongest ally. Now, I don't want a word from anyone over the course of the next few minutes, anyone except Agent Simon."

A flurry of curious looks flashed between the group he was addressing and he turned from them to walk down the two lines of CTU recruits facing each other, whispering a near silent order to each. After he had spoken to all of them, he went to Agent Simon who looked up with suspicion in her dark, expressive eyes. Jack Bauer looked at her for a long moment, wondering if she were up to the task, if she would give into her own doubts. Well, now was the time to find out. He placed himself directly in front of the recruits, blocking her view.

"Agent Simon, I want you to guide Agent Mathison toward you. Your voice will be the only thing he'll have to go by."

The short, slender woman nodded and wiped her hands on her jeans before taking the field comm from him. "Seems simple enough."

Jack smiled to himself and stepped back, watching her expression as she saw the chance in circumstance. Mathison, clad only in a uniform T-shirt and a light pair of pants in the summer heat, was still facing her at the far end of the corridor of thirteen young men and two women, unable to see, and waiting for her instructions.

Between them now, held firmly in the hand of each field recruit, was a combat knife, gleaming danger back at the sunlight, each braced at different angles and heights, forming a corridor of razor sharp blades through which Mathison would have to be directed through to reach her. Cordelia Simon glanced at Jack Bauer with apprehension and bit her lip when he turned back to the others and spoke.

"Ten points off to any recruit that moves their weapon. Agent Simon, you have fifteen minutes to guide him over here… starting now."

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Bill had left her alone for twenty minutes, apparently having dodged in for a cup of coffee when he left the men's room. No doubt the Senate Intelligence Subcommittee was wondering what CTU's standards were for senior analysts, most of the aides hadn't stopped smirking since she'd made her awkward little wish that they all be re-elected. A glare that this time caught Buchanan's attention said "you owe me" when he'd managed to come back and lead the delegation away to the interrogation rooms and Medical.

Chloe fell back into her chair with a huff and waited for her screen to come up, glad for the electronic company of criminals and terrorists when she opened the first work protocol and refined the feed on the Afghani camp. It had been unknowingly feeding them information for months courtesy of a Trojan Horse subroutine that she updated every day twice a day at the beginning and end of her shift. With any luck, they'd never find it and hadn't the resources as near as she could tell to trade their hard drive out as some of the others had learned to do. Guess she had to think of it as security job security.

At noon her phone beeped as she knew it would but the smile came to her face nevertheless. She flipped it open and looked at the text message with a smile that twisted one side of her lips.

:: C – call me. J. ::

She did when she left for lunch. He didn't often ask her to call so her curiosity was piqued. O'Brian sat back from the strips of chicken in front of her and hit the speed dial. Bauer answered in only three rings, the blur of wind around his voice letting her know that he was outside, somewhere on the campus of Pepperdine University where CTU did its physical training and whatever exercises it could that wouldn't draw suspicion. "Hey, how are you?"

Chloe frowned quickly. "They're gone, at least till tonight." No need to ask or tell who "they" were. "We can't get out of this, can we?" She scowled again when she heard him laugh quietly.

"No, we can't. You'll have to get used to being important enough for Buchanan to parade around."

"He owes me, Jack. He stranded me with them. Of course, I said something stupid when I was trying to be nice. Maybe they'll just avoid me tonight."

"Not when they see that dress you'll have to wear."

Chloe's head dropped and she smirked at her lap. "I'd think you of all people wouldn't want dirty old politicians staring at me. If they do start staring remember you picked it out."

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Two deep nicks but nothing more, one at his ankle and another on his left bicep, earned early on when Cordelia was adjusting to thinking for both of them, that her left was his right and vice versa. Once she had overcome that hurdle, she had guided him through the corridor of outstretched knives without further incident. Nikolas Mathison toweled himself off quickly and finished dressing, his dark red hair still dripping as he rushed back out into the heat to catch the bus that would take them all back to CTU, the field recruits who were in his grouping and the data analysts who might someday be running field comms on them.

He swung onto the bus and dropped down into the seat next to their almost legendary instructor. Bauer acknowledge him with a flickered smile and went back to staring out the front window of the bus. After a few minutes, Mathison realized he wasn't seeing the palm tree-lined boulevards moving past them …if he was seeing anything at all. It wasn't the first time he'd seen Bauer seem to detach once the day was over, nor had it escaped the notice of the other trainees over the past few months, all of whom left him alone at this time of day unless it was something that couldn't wait.

Chloe had left by the time they had returned and sorted themselves out, going down checklists and taking home briefs for their next day's assignments. There was a note on his desk and two pieces of left over chicken in the small refrigerator in the corner. Fingers still greasy he opened up the folded piece of yellow paper and looked at the short but fluid strokes.

"Jack, tried all day to get out of tonight. No terrorists when we need them. See you at home. C."

The motor pool was nearly empty when he finally left the building, the limousines that had been taking up more than their fair share of parking were gone as were the other vehicles that had comprised the motorcade and forced the lower ranking employees to go elsewhere for the day. Only by virtue of being in at five a.m. had he been able to park where he normally did in the executive lot.

Twenty minutes of traffic later he was walking slowly up the steps to his front door, the ever-present blur of memories trailing his steps and leading them, falling to silence as he entered the upstairs bedroom. He stood in the doorway watching her for nearly a minute, trying to figure out which bra to wear with the low-cut black dress with angled hemline laid out on the queen size bed. She was barefoot and wearing one of his robes, her fine, dark blond hair caught messily in a clip, looking as beautiful to him as always. "How about forget the bra and it'll be our little secret?"

Chloe O'Brian looked up only long enough to twist her lips at him. "Since when did you become my pimp, Jack?"

He finished coming into the bedroom as she tossed the four bras she had out back into their drawer and retrieved out of it a pair of stick-on gel cups that were flesh-colored. "There, no straps," she muttered with a satisfied smirk…one that faded as she felt Bauer's arms encircling her from behind. "I guess I'm supposed to say that if we waste any time we'll be late but I'm the one who doesn't want to go to this thing so...," she stopped talking as a kiss fell on the back of her neck, her eyes rolling toward the opposite wall as her head fell forward. "Don't tease, Jack. I know Mr. Duty-First isn't going to be late to a stupid party that'll make sure we get better funding."

Jack Bauer straightened up and turned her around, relieving her of the robe. "I'm trying to save time. I need to shower and change; you need to shower and finish changing. I thought we could do everything we… needed. It might help our mood having to be there. I'm not thrilled with this either, you know." He stopped talking and lifted his arms as she pulled back enough to tug the sweat-damp shirt over his head and started to work at his pants as soon as she'd tossed it to the floor.

"Yeah, one of us definitely needs a shower. Come on."

They stepped into the large tub as soon as the water falling from the showerhead was warm enough, Chloe finding herself pressed against the wall, her wet hair sticking to her face as she opened her mouth to Bauer's insistent tongue. Once she knew she wouldn't slip she let go of the side of the enclosure and reached forward, her hands snaking around his waist to reach up as far as she could on his back.

Bauer's sighing moan vibrated down her throat as she slowly stroked her wet hands down from his shoulders to his narrow hips, over the scars that torturers had left upon him, massaging the tension from his back. The next breath he took caught in his throat as her hands paused for a moment and worked at a particularly tight spot and then gently continued downward, teasingly stroking his buttocks as he gripped her shoulders and ground his pubic bone against hers. That alone almost made her come before they'd gotten down to business.

Jack shook his head to clear it and released her lips to arch his face back into the shower spray, looking back down to find Chloe with her lower lip in her teeth beneath the strands of darkened hair that that had escaped from the clip she'd yet to take from her head. He removed it for her and tossed it over the top of the white curtain to clatter to the tile floor. The rest of her hair obligingly tumbled downward and he buried his fingers in it as he brought his mouth to hers once again. One of the hands that had been stroking his buttocks slid forward over his hip and down between his legs, toying with his slowly engorging erection in the warm flow of water, bringing him along with firm but careful strokes.

When she reached to move her hand to stroke between his testicles, Jack accommodated her, lifting one foot to the side of the tub, growling into her mouth again as her touch lightened to almost nothing and her fingers began to tease and stroke his already aching-for-attention scrotum. Her touch was barely there, just enough to leave him desperate for more, which was, of course, just what they both wanted. Her skilled fingers had programmed the soft, vulnerable folds of his most private flesh as well as any computer. The growling gave way to a moan down her throat that sent wave of pleasure though her own groin as her other hand left his back to pump his erection, her thumb circling the still flaccid tip.

He was hers… there were times she still couldn't believe it, but now wasn't one of them.

Chloe O'Brian chided herself for thinking too much even as her senses were being overwhelmed. Jack's tongue was still in her mouth, hers was still in his, and both of his hands were now occupied with the breasts she had been unsure how to clothe just a few minutes ago. They only had two hours before they were supposed to be at the hotel, including L.A. drive time, and Mr. Duty First would inevitably come to his senses and leave them both crazed if this didn't go more quickly. She opened her eyes for a moment and saw that his were still closed in concentration; she suffered a moment of flattery, then with withdrew her wet hand from between them to stroke the outside of his upraised leg, rubbing the taut muscle there for just a moment before sliding it over his hip and tickling his backside.

Jack Bauer was a hard man to distract but his guard was down now, allowably so, as Chloe O'Brian's one hand gently gripped and stroked penis and the other teased the stretched out cheek of his upraised leg. His mind cluttered with numerous pleasures, the mild sting caught him completely off-guard as a long, slender finger suddenly entered him and then slowly and firmly proceeded upward.

Jack grunted in surprise at the intrusion, his hips bucking into Chloe's groin, his now even more madly stiffening erection thrusting into her still attending hand. He found O'Brian ready for his reaction, however; she quickly but gently leaned forward and pinned him to the shower wall with her torso as her teeth closed gently on his lower lip just enough to keep it and the rest of him securely, if pleasantly, trapped. Both actions were forgotten an instant later as the throbbing and energy already consuming his groin suddenly approached overwhelming. Chloe relaxed her grip on his erection and straightened so that she was no longer gently pinning him against the slick wall. He followed her, leaning forward, his head over her shoulder and gasping, willingly helpless to the pleasure of her finger pressuring his prostate. She gave him no mercy, stroking the hidden gland deftly and firmly as he held himself against her, his hips and thighs twitching and his toes clenching the safety mat.

Chloe grinned to herself when she felt Jack Bauer's stomach suddenly spasm and tighten away from her; he growled and pressed further forward to restore the contact, hip to hip, groin to groin, the hand still working skillfully on his penis caught between them. He surrendered gladly, biting his lip, moaning, panting. Each reaction from him bringing O'Brian pleasure in return. Jack's swiftly completed erection rubbed across her own aching sex when she let go of him from the front; his hips pumped with the rhythm she set for them from within as her arm snaked around his lower back.

The surprise over, he found himself enjoying her ministrations as her touch became more precise and playful. Her hand no longer between them, Jack rubbed against her as she controlled the organs now controlling him. When his pace quickened enough, she withdrew from his most private place with a last maddening tickle. Inspired and ready, Bauer's hands closed around her waist and she gripped his shoulders as he lifted her up, her legs closing around him tightly.

Chloe felt only the smallest twinge as he, in turn, easily entered her. She was more than ready for him; his moans and willing submission to her intrusion and stimulations had caused her to have one superficial orgasm already.

Jack regained his voice as he turned and leaned her against the wall, now back on two feet and twitching his hips as he held her steady, enjoying the sensation of being cradled so deeply within her but fighting his own need to thrust long enough to growl up at her. "For a second there I thought I should cancel your "Cosmo" subscription. Paybacks are hell, by the way."

"Depends on what you call "hell", right Jack?" she huffed, tightening down on him and squeezing his ribs with her thighs as she caught his lower lip in her teeth and reached down his wet back to stroke the ridged and scarred flesh. The constantly falling water forced their hold on each other to be tighter than it might have otherwise, limiting their movements, forcing them to a slower, more frustrating rhythm that in the end would prolong their pleasure.

Chloe reached behind her and grabbed the safety grip of the tub enclosure, letting go of Jack with her arms and holding herself up with her hands. As he leaned back, his lips went immediately to her nipples, his teeth grazing them to rocks as a shuddering chill went through her even in the warm shower spray. She smiled at his ability to multi-task as his thrusts into her sex never lost a beat. She could feel herself starting to climax again, this time far more significantly, and moaned in a way that caused Jack to thrust into her even more quickly. Their ragged breathing echoed off the walls of the stall.

Jack Bauer, however, was a man of far too much self-control and a sadistic streak that had its small uses right now. He looked up at O'Brian to see her head thrown back, sliding up and down the wall as she welcomed the erection he drove into her over and over. Her eyes were closed and her mouth open. Her breasts were rock hard and the muscles of her arms rippled as she rocked against his thrusts. Her legs clenched in time with his movements, which now were taking their turn at controlling her reactions; mathematician that she was, she had already, perhaps unconsciously, timed the intervals of his thrusts so that she clenched down on him each time. He hadn't thought it was possible to want a woman this much again since Terri had died, or to know one as well, not only how to simply please her, but drive her insane.

His arms clenching her middle, Jack bit his lip and paused for a long moment, certainly he was about to black out but thinking it would be worth it. The slick iron and velvet hold she had on his penis clenched and rippled rapidly, telling him she was on the edge. A small squeak of impatience strained from her throat as he held her there… two seconds… four… six… She started to lower her head… first to see if he was all right and if so… to give him one of THOSE looks.

The glare that he was inviting never came. It was usurped by a look of shock and disbelief as he suddenly lifted her clear and withdrew from her, still powerfully erect and leaving her gasping and angry. He thought she might go for his throat as he carried her, both of them dripping, to the bed. He laid them down on it on the opposite side from her dress for the evening and then shoved it to the floor out of harm's way. Chloe, legs still locked around his waist as he leaned over her, finally gave him a ferocious glare. "Okay, you win. Your paybacks are hell. Damn it, Jack, come on or I'll spend until the next time we're here planning revenge."

Jack reached up to stroke her clenching jaw with a slow grin. "Threats only make me more determined. You know that."

She gave him a reluctant smirk then. She knew that better than anyone. "Okay, how about "please" instead of "damn it"?"

Jack blinked genuine shock then. "You can't be begging? Not Chloe O'Brian? Should I be that flattered?"

"No, you should be that worried. I only… uhm… did what I did… to get things moving faster; you're just being mean now, to yourself, too, don't think I don't know that either." Chloe arched her hips up then, bringing her sex back against his swaying, engorged organ and feeling him respond involuntarily. She unwrapped her legs from around his back and locked them around his thighs, pulling him down and closer to repeat the maneuver. This time Bauer gave in, reaching down to position himself to enter her, teasing her wetness with his fingers before he did.

Chloe growled as he toyed with her, everywhere beneath her ribs aching and spastic and…worst of all, waiting. Reaching her limit, she slid her hands down his back again, still mindful of the brutality he'd suffered even now, and curled her fingers over his buttocks, driving her short nails into the sensitive flesh there with slowly increasing pressure. Jack growled quietly down her throat as her coiled fingers moved further and further inward over flesh increasingly more sensitive. His flexing hips bucked and swayed tantalizingly in her grasp as she in turned tickled and gripped him, firmly pulling him closer and closer, taking advantage of the fact he was balancing on his knees… and then he was back inside of her, fully encased in the frantic warmth and energy that he had created.

Already preparing to lose herself in the rebuilding orgasm, Chloe arched against him, grunting, and used her heels on the back of his thighs and the fingers coiled over his backside to pull him even closer. Jack instinctively twitched away from the pricking sensation of her nails and lay down on top of her. "Careful. We'll be even more late if I have another exam from Doctor Chloe."

Grinning now despite herself, Chloe withdrew the "threat". She flattened out her hands on his well-muscled and now rapidly clenching buttocks, enjoying twice the feel of how hard he was working for her as she drove herself against him as well, their pace quickening again. "Just that sperm sample then, right, Mr. Bauer? Then you and Doctor Chloe can get dressed."

Jack Bauer took a deep breath to prepare himself and gripped her shoulders firmly as he drove himself into her one last time, his toes digging into the mattress as he held himself as far inside of her as far as he could go and felt the fury of hot contractions madly stroking his shaft. The sensations simply began there, however, consuming the rest of his body as he came. Her responding orgasm sent a shock wave though him before he collapsed, trembling and spent

Coming with him was a concussion of pleasure. Her vision black and starry, Chloe O'Brian was barely aware of Jack sprawled, his consciousness blurry, on top of her, pushing him off only when the buzzing sensory explosion of her own orgasm faded and she became aware it was also black and fuzzy because it was difficult to breath. She backed away from him slowly and reached for the container of moistened wipes beside the bed, taking care of herself first, and then cleaning him gently as he watched her with a relaxed and dazed expression. "We are gonna' be late, Jack."

Minutes later, mostly recovered, he sat up slowly, then kissed her nose. "Probably, and we never did get in an actual shower. Don't worry, they're mostly politicians. We'll be the least important people there."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

They were late, but Jack had been right in his assessment that no one actually cared. The only person who noticed their arrival was Bill Buchanan and he did that with more relief than irritation. Chloe turned her face down to her shiny, black heels as they stepped out of the limo, keeping the smirk out of his view. She turned the smirk into a phony smile as she took Jack's offered arm and started the slow climb up the twelve broad terraces that served as the stairway up to the lobby of the Cerulean Cove, the newly opened grand hotel that towered next to Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City. A circular monolith of blue glass, it gleamed in the fading light of the last rays of sun that had nearly slipped into the Pacific.

Once inside it was obvious that it had been open for less than a month. The carpets were unworn, the scent of plastic competed with the vases of fresh cut flowers, and a few rooms at the far end of the administrative hallway were still unpainted. Drop cloths covered the ladders and buckets in the dimness, unnoticed by almost everyone but the compact blond man who stood now a few feet inside the rotating glass doors, unconsciously scoping the entrances and counting the interior doors and the general lay of the land. The part of him that Teri Bauer had influenced over the years lead him to notice the beauty of the well-blended grays, blues, and blacks of the decor. The corridors that left the main area radiated outward like the spokes of a ship's wheel.

Chloe bit her lips back but was unable to hide the smile when she looked up at Bauer. "I'm glad I can swim."

Jack offered her a tight smile and steered her toward Buchanan. "We're definitely in over our heads."

Giggling, Chloe tightened her arm against her ribs to press his hand more close as they made their way across the gowned and black-suited crowd. "Did I tell you what I said to the Speaker of the House?'

"No."

"Good."

They reached Buchanan just as the smile faded from Jack Bauer's face and the older man hid his own smile at seeing it. So much had happened to him over the past nearly ten years that even a moment's happiness was still a thing he valued to see on his friend's face. Jack technically was now not his employee, having moved over to the training division of CTU, but Jack was still issued office space at CTU, somewhere he could work from if a situation might benefit from his advice. It was understood by everyone up to the President that he would be limited only to that role.

"Chloe, you look lovely."

The blond woman shrugged her black clad shoulders slightly. Her smile twitched. "Well, we're outside the office and Jack's here so I guess it's okay for you to tell me that. Thanks. How long do we have to be here?"

"Chloe…," Bauer's low voice had an edge of warning to it but he was fighting a smile.

"Trust me," Bill countered. "Chloe only asked what I have a dozen times on the way over. Karen can't be here, so I don't have anyone to hide behind. She's usually my lightening rod at these things. May I?" He stepped slightly closer and offered O'Brian his arm.

The amount of time his lead analyst spent in heels could be measured by the depth of the sharp dent in Bauer's black formal evening jacket where her hand gripped his arm. That was the only sign of her discomfort that he could detect, however, as she relaxed and began denting Buchanan's instead as they moved through the crowd. The angled layers of the crossed hem of her knee-length black dress played daringly up her legs on either side; above it the rhinestone-trimmed neckline plunged far less sharply than it seemed. The women other women in the room fell into two dress classifications, those in smartly-tailored business suits and subdued well-designed dresses who were politicians or their staffers, and the clutch of trophy wives or girlfriends in gowns that announced their status.

Chloe crowded behind the taller man as much as she could as they maneuvered the glass-walled lobby of the circular hotel. Jack watched her with a smile as they moved in front of him, forcing his eye away from the turn of her hip as she moved, and without conscious formed a map in his mind of the layout of the Cerulean Cove.

The lobby was all that one would have expected from the hotel's name. The wooden trim looked as if it had been stripped from a sailing ship, polished brass joints connecting each section of wooden railing on the stairs that swept and spiraled up to the left and the right. The pictures on the wall were of seascapes and palm-lined horizons, peeking out from frames made to look like large portholes. Burnished steel dolphins, curved in mid-leap, formed the handles of each door and the fluorescent lights overhead had been made to look like open cargo hatches letting in the sun.

The most impressive thing, however; was the carpet, and Bauer paused to take it in; the pattern filled the entire area, an ancient mariner's map of the globe surrounded the main desk of the circular lobby, decorated with ancient names, ancient trade routes, and three and four-masted schooners occasionally threatened by sea monsters. The décor spoke of money spent with abandon and mostly to impress. There was still some work going on as the new hotel hosted its first major event; down the end of a service corridor Jack saw another ladder, several cans of paint and a few miscellaneous chemicals that had been left out but were mostly hidden under tarps. A few decorative lighting fixtures were still unlit and the windows to the hair salon and spa were both blocked on the side with "Pardon Our Final Touches" banners.

Chloe O'Brian looked around her in more detail as Bill Buchanan came to a stop, her eyes immediately on Jack as he drew up beside them. "Geez, look at this place. Let me guess; only pirates can afford to stay here?"

Both men bit back smiles but Buchanan quickly felt his amusement fade. "Look, we're only going to have a few moments before we're spotted and the hounding starts. There are six high profile Senators here, all on the Intelligence Subcommittee, and the Speaker of the House, and we need them to be on our side when the money gets handed out next year. Jack, Chloe, you brought down Charles Logan, revealed that he was a traitor in one of the worst possible scandals to hit this country. They'll want to be associated with you, use you as a reference when they go back to their colleagues."

"It can't be much worse than what I had to deal with back in Washington," Jack answered, reclaiming Chloe's arm and drawing her close, as if unconsciously considering the possible threat of her inadvertent bluntness. She didn't look up at him, just followed as he left, glad for her long-wearing lipstick as she drew her lips between her teeth and prepared to keep them there.

The pirate map scroll of a lobby sign directed the "geologist's" conference members upstairs and she dug her fingers into Bauer's arm again as the went up to the next level. The height of the ceiling in the lobby had told her spatially well-oriented mind that it was where the third floor would have been in a normal set-up. The watery theme flowed down from upstairs, dark and light blue swirls formed the pattern of the carpet lined the curved steps, as if they were walking up a waterfall. From there they took the elevators up to the fourteenth floor and followed the narrow corridor it opened onto to a room that occupied most of the floor, a function room that they guessed remained sealed off to normal guests unless it was in use. A few short service corridors met the hallway but there were no guests rooms, only facilities.

Beyond the doors, circular glass walls enclosed a room made to look like a tropical island. Real palm trees grew in massive, cleverly hidden plots, bamboo screens stood up from the sand-colored carpet, creating alcoves and conversation pits. Three fountains that they could see trickled down a fiberglass and stonework volcano and formed small ponds filled with koi and exotic lilies. The volcano, a good twenty-five feet high, was lit from within with brilliant, pulsing red strobe lamps near the top. It was from the side of the volcano that they had emerged through the secured doors. Across from them the first of four bars they could see dotted the room, designed of course, to look like cabanas. The bartenders behind them were wearing khaki shorts, brightly colored shirts, and leis.

Chloe turned to look up behind them as they went farther into the room, no longer hanging onto Jack quite so tightly as she took in the décor. "Wow, this place is really neat. Of course, with us here, the volcano might actually erupt."

Jack Bauer shook his head gently, taking his eyes off the lights of Culver City just beyond the windows. "You might prefer that before we get out of here," he replied, turning her in the direction of the nearest tray of non-alcoholic refreshments. The last thing they needed was Chloe O'Brian in a more-direct-than-usual state of mind. She picked a glass of ginger ale off of it with a wry smile, well aware of why she was being lead away from the tropically dressed cabana boys and their umbrella-trimmed offerings.

The Senators entered in the usual flurry, only one aide apiece, however, this time and only two photographers leading them, walking backwards, out of the elevator that was concealed in a recess of the fiberglass volcano. Four reporters entered with them, one each from CNN, NBC, and Reuters; the first two of which had camera crews with them. Chloe shrank back from the new arrivals immediately, taking her turn at tugging Jack in the opposite direction. His compliance was not unwilling. He had no intention of turning up even in a background shot of news that would eventually be broadcast nationally or internationally. Too many people might recognize him who otherwise had little resource to do so.

The excitement of the new arrivals faded quickly, however, and the lights of the cameras vanished before they could make it around to the other side of the huge central structure. The cameras powered down in favor of the more complex method of exposing the political realities as the reporters blended into the crowd and began to engage their targets in less glaring interrogations, hoping for the unwitting aid of the cabana boys tending bar.

It took only a few minutes before the fate Chloe was dreading befell them, in the form no less of Senator Bass gently saluting Bauer with his drink and closing on them. Chloe grimaced at herself as she snapped back like a rubber band when Jack didn't retreat from the other man's approach, returning his salute with the Scotch in the hand not clenching her against him. Sighing invisibly she screwed the smile onto her face and wished she'd followed the Botox suggestion.

"Agent Bauer, it's a honor to meet you. Somehow I always missed you in Washington."

Jack managed his own smile with effort, if Bass had been there for even half the times the Senate voted than he wouldn't have. "Demands of the job. I understand."

The Senator smiled. "I did have the pleasure of meeting Ms. O'Brian earlier today."

Chloe's smile twitched. "Hi… again. I hope I didn't bore you."

The gray-haired man shook his head gravely, his pale eyes on her. "I find no aspect of protecting this country boring, from threats outside or threats within. Mr. Bauer, you know what I'm saying. I wasn't on the Judicial Committee that dealt with Charles Logan, nor were you there to hear the testimony of your colleagues during your captivity but your efforts, your clarity of purpose, have created a debt this nation can't repay. To have you continue that service is an honor."

Jack looked away, uncomfortable and still dubious. Too many of these conversations ended with appeals to support their intelligence committee proposals. Once would have been enough to make him doubt them all. Part of him wanted to ask if he would have as much of their gratitude if he'd just succeeded at a normal mission that had not had political ramifications. So far the only politician he had freely supported was Senator Calvin and that only because Calvin had also been David Palmer's best friend.

"Thank you." Bauer finally said and waited, wondering when the other shoe would drop. Instead, Bass nodded and lowered his head.

"I know what's been happening Mr. Bauer. I don't want anything from you, CTU has my vote for the DHS funding allocations. Thank you again. I might hand out the money, but I don't make the difference." He nodded again and turned his back on the couple, moving away quickly and leaving them to stare at one another in silence.

It was Chloe who broke it first, watching the tall man through the clutter of lights and bodies and palm trees and ferns. She turned back and brought her shoulders up in a shrug. "He sounded really sincere. He's probably setting you up."

Jack Bauer was suddenly tired, only for a moment, and only in spirit, but his eyes betrayed it to the woman who missed nothing when it was important and there were no times for her when he was not. "I don't know. Maybe not but it was nice to hear for now."

"Yeah, well, it's hard to run a voice stress analysis just in your head," she answered after a moment, her eyes leaving his to go back to the crowd.

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"How many?"

"Six, and the Speaker of the House. There are reporters here, too, some of them well known."

"Anyone else?"

"Else? Do you mean of value?"

"Of value or concern."

"We've covered value, as for concern, not that I can see. There are three CTU agents here but only three, two FBI budget directors, and two CIA congressional liaisons."

"The FBI people will be no one we need to worry about, the same for the bureaucrats of the CIA. Tell me about the CTU people."

"One is a Director of Operations, transferred from Seattle, with the agency nearly twenty years, the other is a Senior Data Analyst – a female, and the last is a protocol instructor but his file is …vague. He's new, it seems. It's not complete yet."

"So, a man whose best years are behind him, a computer expert, and a teacher… no one of consequence when we move forward."

"No, Sir, no one. Now that the right packages are in play, we can start as soon as everything else is in place."

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"My feet hurt."

"Chloe, it's only been an hour."

"Have you seen these shoes?"

Jack looked down at the shoes again, a smile slowly turning his lips. It grew broader as when she used her elbow to rake him lightly on the ribs. "Now you're just looking at my legs." Her attempt to sound irritated failed miserably for once.

"I've been accused of much worse things."

Chloe rolled her eyes, her lower lip suddenly protruding. "Funny, me too. I wonder why that would happen." She managed to look genuinely irritated for the space of a few seconds before the smile overtook her clenched lips. At least she could look like she was enjoying herself and there was the frumpy geek school girl inside of her who was, despite her claims, having a fantastic time. All the proms and dances she had missed or grumpily forced to attend were being soundly trounced in her mind by the fact she was in the middle of a high-powered political soiree' and on the arm of the handsomest boy in the room. She doubted any of "popular" girls in high school ever got to do anything near this.

Jack suppressed a grimace as they were closed in upon again, this time by the Speaker of the House but at least she remembered his name, Richard Dominguez. "It's hard to believe where power can take a man to one their sense of morality has gone that far askew," the Speaker commented, shaking his head. "Of all the things I thought I'd face in office, the impeachment of a president never occurred to me. It must have taken an amazing belief in what you were doing to do what you did, Mr. Bauer."

"There didn't seem to be a lot of options at the time, Mr. Speaker. If we hadn't taken him on like we did, if Martha Logan hadn't acted on the behalf of the American people, nothing would have been uncovered." Jack looked at the other man skittishly. He'd grown tired of recanting the more dramatic details of what had happened with former President Charles Logan, wondering why they didn't just read the damn reports he'd spent a week filling out after he'd recovered enough from his captivity to put his thoughts together. Without Aaron Pierce's cooperation and Chloe as a guide, there were a hundred things he probably wouldn't have remembered.

Dominguez nodded and folded his arms over his dark gray suit. "You'll have the appropriations you need, Mr. Bauer. Set your price, as it were, and we'll get the funding for CTU on the table first thing. I understand you've become a protocol instructor there."

"He did, and if he can pass on half the brains he showed getting rid of my filthy rat of an ex-husband there's not a terrorist in this world that'll touch this country and not end up answering for it."

The words, of course, could have come only from one person. Jack turned with an unexpected smile and looked at Martha Logan closing the distance between them, her arms extended. She wore a white sequined gown that fell almost to the floor and was slit on either side half-way up her thighs, her pale blond hair drifted around her face, a few strands tumbling down from an elegant upsweep. "Jack, it's always so good to see you." In three-inch heels, she bent to kiss his cheek and then did the same to O'Brian.

Chloe offered her a lop-sided smile. "I didn't know you'd be here."

"Trust me, I have so many staff people telling me what's going on in my life any more, I don't know where I'm going to be half the time myself. Senator Freeman invited me to join her at the last minute. Her son got word his first launch was a go and he had to return to NASA and left her with an invitation to waste." She spun the half-empty glass of champagne at them and turned toward the Speaker. "Richard, always… always a pleasure."

"I haven't seen you since I testified; meeting the First Lady on the witness stand… did you imagine?."

Richard Dominguez offered her a tight and unsteady smile, not sure how to react to her forthright attitude and lifted eyebrows and inclined to remain silent in the face of the situation. He wondered how much champagne the former First Lady had managed to imbibe but saw that her sculpted cheeks were pale and her gestures were steady. Her security and confidence came from a source unfermented. "Well, I suppose it falls under that… oh, now I can't think of it… that famous Chinese curse."

Chloe O'Brian looked up at the small ironic smile on Jack Bauer's face as he filled in the gap in the Speaker's memory. "'May you live in interesting times'."

Martha smiled through the brief, uncomfortable moment then took a step closer to Jack and looped her arm through his on the side not staked out by Chloe O'Brian. "So, tell me about teaching. Have you been successful passing off some of that cleverness?" Jack stumbled slightly into her as Martha Logan turned him and dragged him away, politely, of course, and with a wink behind his head at O'Brian who couldn't help the muffled hiss of laughter. Another woman might have been jealous, another woman might have been irritated, but she and Jack Bauer had been through too much for that reaction to be stirred in either of them.

Chloe turned back to look up at the stocky, dark-haired Dominguez who was already looking at her with a vague air of surprise, probably at her amused reaction to her significant other being spirited away by one of the most beautiful and powerful women in the world. Her shoulders jerked upward as she met his gaze. "I guess you have to go to a lot of these things, hunh?"

"Well, you get used to them and learn what to say to leave."

Chloe nodded and let her lips twist to one side. "Yeah, I guess in your job you have to make a lot of excuses." The relaxed, slightly impudent smile that had been warping O'Brian's face suddenly became a rigid grimace. "Uh, crap, I meant about getting out of things. Damn it. I shouldn't have said 'crap'. I think I shouldn't talk to you anymore. Maybe I shouldn't talk to anybody. Excuse me." Chloe backed away from him, not daring to meet his eyes and too busy rolling her own regardless. She barely avoided the lei-wearing waiter who was maneuvering around the room and felt her face darken from the blood running up her neck. Jack was nowhere in sight and neither was Bill Buchanan. She stopped at the first sign of food, dropping into a deep green chair that almost swallowed her completely and shoved the jumbo shrimp in her mouth to fill it with something other than words. If she was lucky maybe no one would notice her the rest of the night. Outside the tall windows, the moon told her that she had at least three hours yet to hide in plain site.

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Bill Buchanan looked across the wide expanse of the tree-dotted function room and around the volcano and saw with a smile that Jack was standing near a window a quarter of the way across the huge circular space. Just over his head, he could see the elegant sweep of blond hair that belonged to Martha Logan. Jack was pointing at LAX and the lights of four planes that were trading off their posts there, two headed up toward the Pacific and two coasting down over the city, low enough that they disappeared behind the taller buildings as they made their final approaches. As he was doing so another aircraft loomed into view, far closer, close enough in fact that they could see the CTU tail logo and close enough that Martha stepped back slightly and then laughed at herself. It occurred to Buchanan a moment later that Jack without Chloe meant that Chloe was on her own here somewhere and a frown of worry marked his forehead for several moments before he forced himself to relax. Chloe had seen too many political incidents to start one of any significance herself. Buchanan turned away from watching Bauer and the former First Lady and nodded politely at the small, slender black woman who had come to stand next to him at the pseudo-cabana.

"Senator Freeman, it's lovely to see you."

"How nice to be remembered, it hope it's just not having been trained for such things." She bowed a little, her beaded dark blue gown rattling lightly.

"If I can be forgiven for saying so, remembering a woman such as yourself is quite easy."

Freeman offered him a quick smile and lifted her arms to better display the dress and the fair amount of cleavage it showed. "Nothing to forgive. If I didn't know what I look like I wouldn't have worn it. I didn't stop being a woman when I became a Senator but there is business to discuss. CTU has put in quite a request for funding, nearly an eighth of the DHS budget. I want to know what you think merits that and not with a mike or some stuffy report between us. Tell me what your gut says about what we're facing out there."

Bill Buchanan lifted his chin slightly and picked up both their drinks when they were produced from behind the small, free-standing bar, offering her the pink one with the umbrella. "You might not sleep tonight if I'm honest."

"I'll sleep less if I think you're not."

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Chloe glared at her powered down cell phone, having concealed it in a hidden pocket built into her otherwise tight black dress. No way she was going to not have a means to reach CTU if averting a crisis might get her out of here. If Buchanan wouldn't have needed a corroborating report, she might have been tempted to fake one; the unpopular schoolgirl savoring the revenge of living well had been sated. The glare didn't fade as she looked at the time and realized Jack had been away from her for the better part of an hour. Martha Logan hadn't seen him for months though and they would be glad to have a chance to just be friends. Their first meeting had been less than stellar with Jack sprawled naked and bleeding on the floor of the bathroom in the safehouse where he'd been recovering from captivity and torture. Martha had helped her to lift him back to his feet and then dried and dressed him herself. Chloe bit back an involuntary smile, Jack was probably just glad to have his clothes on in front of her.

O'Brian was stirred out of her reverie by a portly, white-haired man sitting down next to her, wearing a navy suit and a bright yellow tie over his light blue shirt. He smiled genially and glanced around, making a slight face and then glancing up at the volcano. "Senator Anderson Dobbs. Are you hoping that thing would erupt, too?"

Chloe relaxed instantly and almost completely; she liked this man. "Wow, politician and mind-reader, that must be convenient. I'm Chloe --."

"O'Brian, yes. You did the technical presentation at CTU. Quite a remarkable place. Do you ever get used to it?"

Chloe's eyes dropped to the floor for a long moment then met the green ones across from her. "Yeah, but in the back of your mind you always realize how great it is to have all this stuff. I don't just actually mean the stuff, but people, too. I work with great people. They don't always think I'm great but that's the job, right?"

"Sounds like we have more in common than it first appears," he offered, flagging over a passing waiter in a red Hawaiian shirt and taking two glasses of champagne from the tray and offering her one. Chloe bit her lip and quickly waved him off, her face clenching as he returned it and looked back at her. "You don't drink?"

"No, but thank you. I just I say enough stupid things on my own."

Senator Dobbs smiled even more brightly than he had before. "Well, then we have something else in common, at least the champagne gives me an excuse if I need one. Before I have to have the opportunity, however, I wanted to thank you. You're not just some technical wizard at CTU, I know you also helped to bring down Charles Logan. You and Jack Bauer."

Chloe felt the blush darken her face as if she'd had three glasses of champagne at once. "Thanks, uhm, it wasn't just Jack and me though, Aaron Pierce and Martha Logan helped, and my ex."

"Your ex-husband, oh – of course, Martin… Morton…?"

"Morris," she offered quickly.

"Of course, is he here?"

"No, he's not. He's probably still on at the shoe store."

Dobbs thin eyebrows ratcheted up a good half-inch. "The shoe store?"

"Yeah, it's kind of a long story." Her expression drifted left for a moment and then snapped back. "I just want to talk about CTU funding, okay?"

Senator Dobbs bit back an even more intense smile to prevent this blunt and honest woman from thinking he was laughing at her. "All right, why don't you tell me what technical toys and funds Santa should bring CTU and I'll see how far down the chimney the Intelligence Appropriations Committee can get it."

Chloe relaxed again, a bright smile crossing her face like a ray of sunlight. "Really?"

"Really."

She took a deep breath, her mind racing, her mouth barely keeping up once she got started.

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"And the lines of communication, they're ready?"

"We have redundancies in place and the interference generators are ready. Our people in New York have been at the Ashokan and Croton Reservoirs are ready as soon as we give the word should it come to that. The containers are in place and passed the last round of tests."

"And the submarine?"

"The USS Alexander is 550 nautical miles from the target zone. Close enough to where we need her make the drop in a few hours. Everyone is waiting for your word." The dark-haired man sitting before the laptop turned away from it for the first time in hours, his eyes red and his back stiff. "Field operations is also ready, as soon as we know where everyone is in the Cerulean Cove, then we can begin."

Kathirivan Bhakti put down the glass of cold tea he had barely touched and scanned his dingy surroundings, so far from the estate he had known as a child and a youth that he could barely grasp that such empty squalor existed, until his ideals and a thousand brutal political realities had forced the knowledge upon him. "This is it, you know? The first step in ending the backward life and slavery of our people, our first step into the realm of equality with the nations who use our skills and our labor but who refuse to return anything significant. They say when the war at home ends… they will talk, but we will see to it that they will talk now."

Patel Amrish nodded and glanced around the underground bunker for himself, his computers and technicians and buried communications lines glowing dimly in the permanent dark. If they were cut there were couriers who stood ready to go to the smaller communications centers should they fall silent for too long.

All it would take was a single command and the retribution and regrets and consequences would begin. Kathirivan Bhakti would never likely live to see it, nor would anyone here except he was the only one who knew that. Their lives would not be wasted, however, Kajananphur would be a free and equal nation for the first time in its war-torn history and in his next life he would have the reward of its gratitude.

Bhakti took a sip of his tea and sat down, scanning the dark, eager, innocent eyes of the seven young men and the woman who had followed him and made the dream they would never see happen become possible. They would be martyrs, too. He owed them that chance.

Patel Amrish, unknowingly condemned to martyrdom, offered Bhakti a smile with a flicker of impatient eagerness. "The Cerulean Cove, Sir, Nirmala is saying all is ready."

A final moment passed, a moment he savored because it was the last moment of certain oppression… but then that moment ended. "Tell him to begin."

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As delightful as she was, Martha Logan, unleashed of her husband and of sound mind, was, as much as any tornado or hurricane, a force to behold. The press were now milling around her but she had let Jack Bauer slip out of their scrutiny while still insisting she'd be right back to him as soon as the last question was done. He finally managed to slip away completely when the CNN crew interposed itself into the her line of sight on him, snatching up a glass of something stronger than champagne as he slid back along the wall, into the clump of palm trees and behind them to the seating alcove under the volcano. Chloe looked up as he sat down beside her with an uncharacteristic thud, downing the drink and not seeming to notice the man sitting next to her as he dropped his forehead to her shoulder for a moment.

Chloe scowled slightly when he looked up. "Gee, usually I make the abrupt entrances. Is something wrong? Oh, wait, Jack, this is Senator Dobbs from New York."

"It's nice to meet you, Senator." Jack reached across her to shake hands with the stout man on the bright green sofa. "I'm sorry to intrude."

Chloe's scowl returned briefly. "You're my date. You can't intrude."

Dobbs suddenly offered them an understanding smile. "I didn't know your work relationship had progressed. Congratulations. Two people who've shown the fortitude the two of you have together, well, it seems natural doesn't it? I have taken up enough of your time, Ms. O'Brian and thank you again. Mr. Bauer, I'd like to speak with you later, right now it looks like you need a little break from politics. Excuse me."

Chloe nodded and remained seated. Jack rose to see him off but remained standing. "He's right. I need to get out of here for a few minutes. I thought it would be you who'd end up needing some air by now."

O'Brian came to her still slightly sore feet and shrugged. "Martha's kind of a handful, isn't she? Good for her." She offered Bauer a lop-sided grin and took the hand he extended toward her, stepping around the glass-topped end table balanced on the head of a polished brass parrot. They waved a brief "we'll be back" at Bill Buchanan as they headed toward the door that lead out into the corridor on the north side of the hotel. The wood paneled hallway was empty and the silence that overtook them as the door fell shut was like warm, soothing blanket. Chloe felt her unknowingly tight shoulders unclench. "Yeah, this is better for a few minutes. How long do we have to be here now?"

Jack looked at his watch as he led them around a corner, stopping just when they came around it to lean on the wall. "Another ninety minutes, ten or fifteen of which we're spending out here."

Surprising him slightly and pleasantly, she took his head in her hands and used her mouth on his to press him gently into the wall, their heights almost equaled by the heels she was wearing. He opened his mouth and sighed through his nose, Chloe's skilled tongue chasing off the taste of media and politicians in a new way. His hands slid around her waist and he groaned as she responded by rolling her hips into him and forcing his buttocks and then his back against the wall. He broke from her with a growl, breathing a touch raggedly and glad for the permanent lipstick she wore. "Damn it, Chloe. If you don't stop I'll have to spend the rest of this thing with a pillow in my lap."

"You could just blame those three paid trophy tramps Senator Stoval has with him saying they're aides. I think there's a warrant for the redhead." She gave him one last grind and stepped back. "Sorry, you shouldn't wear tailored black suits. It's your fault."

He pulled her back for a moment. "Blame the clothes? I have a few accusations to make about that dress then. For one…," Bauer fell silent suddenly, his head tilting back away from the woman in his arms as a flurry of muffled and distant sounds came from the short hallway that led into the party floor dominated by the volcano. Chloe fell silent, realizing he was suddenly concerned about something; still in his arms but no longer distracted by his proximity, she now heard for herself the noises that had stopped the kiss he'd been about to plant on her.

There were footsteps, several of them, coming in their direction, some of which were from heavily booted feet, not running but moving quickly. Punctuating the footsteps was a sound far more disconcerting, an overlapping of muffled grunts and squeals and other footsteps, lighter ones that dragged and fell without rhythm. Instinct overcame the temporary blurring of gentle lust and Jack pushed the analyst aside and crossed the hallway, dragging her by the hand and guiding her against the wall as the sounds became louder and clearer.

O'Brian hung back as long as she could, then moved up to stand chest-to-chest against Jack Bauer as he glanced side-long down the narrow, dark-paneled hallway. The source of the sound became visible seconds later, three compact but heavily armed men were moving down it, herding in front of them two women in black and red pirate-themed maid uniforms and a chef in traditional dress. Both women were crying and stumbling. Moving quietly, Bauer and O'Brian retreated down the side hallway and used the small distance to catch their stopped breaths. The hallway they were in held no open doorways or stairwells or other means of escape. Jack pulled the woman back and she went to try the knob on the first door. "You'll make too much noise. Stay flat against the wall. I can't take out three of them that heavily armed. We'll have to take our chances becoming hostages if they spot us."

Chloe nodded stiffly, her heart pounding. "Who are they? Are they here to rob the place? That doesn't make any sense? It hasn't been open long enough to have enough money to make it worth it."

Bauer shook his head quickly, his voice, like hers barely audible, "It looks like they're all the same nationality and but they're not wearing uniforms. And no, this isn't just a robbery. They're rounding up hostages from all over the building. They're planning to be here for a while, not running out."

Chloe took a breath and held it, her fingers digging into Jack's hand as the six people went past. There were bleeding wounds on the face of the man and the fight was clearly out of him. As they moved further past the hallway where the two CTU staffers were hiding, Jack started to pull them to the opposite wall but stopped at the sound of several more pairs of booted feet. Another six men charged past, catching up with the others. As soon as they had, he drew Chloe with him to the opposite wall. If any of them looked back, the wall where they had been standing would now be empty.

The nine men in a mixed array of fatigues, and their hostages, entered the event room to a chorus of screaming and gunshots that Bauer assumed were being fired, for now, into the air. Chloe tore here eyes off the door as it clanged shut and looked up at Bauer with alarm that was slowly being replaced by acceptance and determination. "What do we do?"

"If we can, we get out of here and get some help. Try your phone."

"How did you know I had my phone?"

A half-smile spent a half-second on his lips. "A couple of minutes ago, I got the impression it was there."

The half-smile transferred itself to the analyst's lips for the rest of the second. "Oh." She retrieved the small device and flipped it open, looking at the picture of the tower on the display and the flashing "X". "No service? That's impossible. L.A.'s got more cell towers than palm trees and this building isn't going to be built to block them; there are too many people who need them who'd come here. Oh my God, … Jack, they're jamming the signal."

Jack took a slow breath and watched as she returned the device to its concealed pocket. "And if they came prepared for that, this is a professional operation."

Chloe glanced back down the hallway, her mouth tightening as she looked up to the man she had listened to do the impossible for so long, who had suffered so much at the hands of people like those who had just passed them. "Do you think we can still get out of here?"

His eyes off her face, Jack still reached up to cradle it with one hand as a thousand questions and hypotheses raced through his mind. "I'm sorry, Chloe. I don't know now, but we're going to try."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Bill Buchanan moved himself to the front of the crowd as the night that had been one of simple irritation and obligation placed him into a scenario he found more, for lack of a better word, familiar. Distantly, he wondered about himself that he had some strange level of comfort when the change in circumstance now included three dead Secret Service agents; all had gone for their weapons the moment the assailants had burst through the doors behind human shields.

Buchanan scanned the crowd quickly as the fourteen armed gunmen moved their newly acquired hostages into place, arranging them as they wanted, sorting out the men from the women and searching everyone, taking PDAs, cell phones, pocket knives, keys, pagers, in fact – any item they found and tossing it all in the decorative pond at the base of the volcano. Their uniforms were a collection of functional fatigues that could have been acquired at any military surplus store but on the shoulder of each was an tailored scythe-like gold insignia that implied Middle Asian descent. None of them seemed to be giving orders for now; all were acting equally to follow some pre-arranged plan. The women they herded onto the west side of the room and there let them stand, huddled and defiant, but quiet. Senator Freeman had placed herself at the front of the group, no doubt intending to speak as soon as she was given the chance.

Buchanan glanced at the man heading for him as they finished isolating the women and began directing the men to the opposite side of the huge room. He recognized the tactic. None of the men would risk the consequences to the women by acting out, knowing they could never reach them in time to protect them from retribution. Professionals then, that was somewhere to start. Next to him, hands similarly raised, Speaker of the House Dominguez glanced up at the CTU director as if he could have pulled a Special Forces Squadron out of thin air and resolved the situation, a silent order, almost, to do something… anything. He shook his head slightly and offered no expression, hoping the others knew enough to stay silent and offer no more aggravation than what their attackers were already feeling. To do what they were doing would have required them to work themselves into a blind fervor of some kind, here in the middle of an American city, with no conceivable way out. The chances that this was a suicide mission were virtually certain; there was even a chance they were drugged.

Taking his place near the front of the crowd of formally suited men, about twenty in all, Buchanan merely shook his head at the shorter Dominguez and finally frowned. "Do whatever they want. We have no idea of their limits or resources." He grimaced and glanced furtively around the scene, a clue that if they could have come this far, they had a great many resources indeed.

Buchanan took one last glance around behind him, lingering on his feet and feigning stiffness as their assailants gestured for them to sit down. The extra few seconds were all he needed as he scanned the group of seated men. Provided he hadn't already encountered them and was dead for it, amongst the men who had been taken hostage, Jack Bauer was nowhere to be seen.

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Jack took the lead as they headed for the elevator, suffering the strange glare of his companion as he took hold of her shoulders. "I need the underwire out of your bra."

"What? I'm not wearing one, remember?"

"Damn it. I need a piece of metal, a small one, or a piece of hard plastic." Bauer looked about in the empty corridor, tensed for the sound of any further footsteps, they were still on the floor where the hostages were being herded. When he turned back, he found Chloe grinning up at him tightly, the back of her cell phone in her hand.

"I only have this."

"Break it. I need an edge."

Chloe did as she was told, balancing the back of phone across the lip of the elevator, off of the bright blue carpet, and then slowly transferring her weight onto it, focused on the thinner plastic of the center. It snapped in seconds and Jack pushed her off of it and quickly took the shard that had been the upper half of the back cover. O'Brian started to ask him what he was doing and then thought better of it, watching instead as he began attacking the screws holding on the faceplate of the elevator control panel. Newly in place, it took him several tries before one of them eventually began to move. Catching on if she didn't know to what yet, Chloe moved to help him with the bottom shard of the phone back. Working together, they had the brass plate off the wall in a few minutes.

Chloe looked at the circuitry behind it and frowned. "It's dead. They shut the elevators down; so why did we do that?"

Bauer didn't look up to answer her but turned away with the sheet of metal in his hands, "So I could do this. I knew the first thing the would do is shut the elevators down as soon as they got them where they needed. The electricity's probably shut down everywhere but where they want it for themselves, the phone lines, too." He began shoving the thin, gold-colored piece of metal between the elevator doors. He was sweating in minutes but the wood-tone doors eventually gave, creeping open enough for his hand to pass through the opening. Chloe moved to help him without being told; together they pulled the doors open enough for either of them to pass through. The light of the corridor slipped through the long narrow opening and shone dimly on the cables in the center of the shaft.

O'Brian backed up a step. "You got to be kidding, right?"

"I don't know yet, but they'll be covering the stairwells. Give me your barrette."

She retrieved the gold strip of plastic from her hair and scowled as he let it plummet down the shaft. He counted to three before the small clatter sounded back up at them, then turned to face his companion with a small, cold smile. "You remember the smell of food when we stopped to change elevators to get to the private floor?"

"Yeah, one of the service kitchens was only four floors below us. I suppose they put one higher up to keep the food from cooling down."

"So, we only have to go down a couple of floors?" O'Brian's tone was a question but her eyes were calm and unwavering as she held the pale blue ones across from her.

"Think you can do this?"

"Well, since our choice is this or be held hostage by lunatics…", she paused and took a small breath, letting a tiny smile touch the corners of her lips, "I trust you."

He took the time they didn't have to plant a quick kiss on her forehead before he took off his jacket and dropped it down the shaft, followed by the piece of metal they had freed from the wall, then he unbuttoned the collar of his shirt and the cuffs to roll the sleeves back. He loosened belt a notch and untucked his shirt. As free to move as he could be, Jack took her by the shoulders again, "I'm gonna' have to drop down a few feet before I can get the cable. Take off your shoes and throw them down the opening. Then take off your hose, but keep them with you."

She nodded quickly, some of her confidence in herself fading as she watched him, unhesitating, leap sideways through the narrow strip of light. She cringed, terrified of hearing him strike the top of the elevator a few floors below them. Her breath left her a moment later when a rustling and grunting sound echoed up from the dark shaft and she knew gravity had been denied its potential victim.

"Chloe?" His voice was barely audible but it sent a wave of hot relief through her and sent her eyes back in her head.

"Okay, I'm moving, I'm moving." Ears keened for the sounds of boots, she sat down on the floor and dropped her shoes over the side of the elevator shaft, mindful of hitting Bauer, then wiggled out of her hose and, not having a bra to stuff them down, tied them around her arm. She stood up with a huff and realized there was nothing else for her to do, … except for what she always did, trust Jack Bauer.

He was where she hoped when she finally got herself turned around and wedged into the cracked open elevator doors, Hanging from the sets of cables that ran the length of the building on this side, invisible, of course, except for where she could see them between his clenched fingers. He had climbed up the twisted, coated bands of metal back to her level. He freed one hand to reach it toward her and was able to reach nearly half-way across the gap she would have to leap. His legs were wrapped around the cable but that was something she was telling by common sense implication. In the darkness beyond the narrowly opened doors, she could only see his shirt and his eyes. He held her gaze as she stood for several seconds he feared they didn't have and then, she was reaching toward him, holding onto the barely parted doors with one hand and leaning out far enough to snare his hand in her own.

Jack made his grip as tight as he could, unable to worry about the bruise he was leaving. "You jump, I'll pull, we'll be fine, Chloe."

"Okay." Her voice was barely audible and her eyes never left the calm blue ones across from her, not daring to face the darkness above and below them both.

Her stomach in her throat, her heart pounding, her mind forced to go blank, Chloe O'Brian leapt into the black. The other option, after all, was still likely die.

…and it was over in less than a second. She collided with the cables roughly, wrapping her arms and hands and legs around them even as Jack pulled her against himself and the massive metal strands. She held onto his shoulder for a split second and then, fearing she would add too much strain to his supporting to his own weight, withdrew her hand and caught the cable in a death grip, her eyes returning to the crease of light across from them. "They'll know where we went."

"It can't be helped. Now let's get moving before we fall. All you have to do is control your slide. We have about thirty feet to drop, then we'll be on top of the elevator car. It'll hold us; they've probably locked it."

"Then what?" She was whispering, they both were but their voices sounded like shouting in the face of their worry about being discovered in the dark, echoing space.

"We get back out on a floor they're not herding hostages onto."

"Gee, you make it sound so easy! You really know how to show a girl a good time, you know that?"

He bit back the smile. "Chloe, get moving."

With a huff, she did, not realizing how tense her arms and legs had become until she tried to move them. Her wrist hurt badly where Jack had gripped it pulling her across. Her eyes never leaving Bauer's she willed herself to relax enough to start sliding down the cable. The rubberized coating made the grip more secure than she thought and her legs were gaining their own set of bruises beneath the twisted folds of her dress.

"We're half-way there, Chlo. Keep your eyes on me."

Chloe relaxed her legs again and dropped slowly, sweat now coating the two-inch cable in her body's grasp. Why did he have to make this look so easy? She scowled and dropped farther and more quickly, realizing her arms were beginning to fatigue, more out of the strain of tension than holding her weight. Just when she thought the elevator had silently dropped away, unnoticed, the cold, irregular metal surface suddenly met her feet. She swung her bare toes clear and found a flat surface, groaning as she finally, slowly let go of the life-line that the cable had been.

Jack landed silently beside her, in between her and door to the floor across from them. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, just my legs hurt. I wish I was in your pants."

She couldn't see him and stood puzzled when she heard the short, muffled, and totally unexpected, laugh that escaped him in the narrow metal space. Biting back a groan, she didn't bother trying to fix when she realized what she'd said, just smirked to herself, glad for a smile that could still come to her face even now. Moving awkwardly, she gathered up her shoes and his suit jacket. As her eyes adjusted to the near total darkness, she could see he was leaning forward against the doors, his ear pressed against their surface. After several seconds had passed, he repeated the procedure of wedging the control panel cover between them, only this time they gave way far more easily. Light poured through the opening, bringing with it momentary blindness. Her toes pinched her too-tight-anyway black heels, Chloe followed Jack Bauer out of the narrow confines of the shaft and back out onto the carpeted floor of the hallway with a sigh of relief, collapsing against the paneled wall. A smile she didn't remember intending crossed her face a moment later and she fought the irrational urge to jump up and down.

"We did it! We went down the elevator shaft. We did it."

Jack managed a ghost of her smile and then lowered his gaze. "We did, but..."

"I know. That means any second they'll find the open doors and know somebody's loose in here, and they'll be even more ready to kill us. Jack, I'm really scared."

He nodded quickly, digging inside of himself for calm to share with her. She wasn't a field agent… and he had no desire to have returned to the field, however involuntarily. "So am I. Let's see if we can push these doors back closed and find our next way out of here. I don't want to leave any clue as to where we might be."

"Okay, but our next step is mine. Let's see if we can find a computer with a working battery. I might able to signal CTU or someone for help if I can get past the interference and not be traced. They might still need lines up for whatever's really going on here."

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The separated hostages were unexpectedly quiet, most middle-aged and well into prominent and public careers, and possessed of a sort of calm under stress that didn't lend itself to loud and unreasonable panic even now. Nirmala Hassal also assumed they had had some sort of briefings in the event something like this ever occurred. Good, he would have control here in short order. His briefings been thorough; the mission itself had been ten years in the planning; five years since the first shovel of dirt had been moved, with so much to accomplish now that the time had come, his own calm surprised him. He waved at the man nearest him to join him.

"The rest of the guests?" He asked, his voice barely audible.

"There were very few of them, no more than twenty. We've locked them in the supply room for the swimming pool. They have no way out and nothing to use. It was emptied out as we ordered."

"Excellent, excellent, so we know the only people moving about in here now are our men, and we have hostages away from here we can use to prove to our powerful friends here that we are serious. Stay in touch with guards there just in case." The man answered in the affirmative but Nirmala Hassal took that for granted, his attention back on the still more useful hostages now under his control.

Most of then were now realizing he was the leader of the fourteen men who had entered the room, an almost invisible figure if he wished to be, who had been as he simply stood and watched as the weapons were taken from the bodies of the Secret Service agents and surrendered by the others, as the men were separated from the women. He surveyed the women first, most of them were shamefully dressed, but he had no truck with that. He wanted to make sure he had the right ones isolated and put at the forefront, the important ones to be used so that the rest would fall in line and know they had even less relevance. Hassal ran a hand over his face, over the scar of a sword that creased his jaw, and over the two day stubble, his hand moving slowly as he stepped away from the north wall of the circular room and to his right, stopping just shy of the group of women. He pointed at the dark skinned one in a sequined dress. "Her. Bring her here."

"What do you want with her?"

Hassal turned to look at the man who had spoken, at least who he thought had spoken, the man who held the title of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. "No need to ask when you're going to find out, eh? It wastes my time having to hear you. It might waste more than that of yours. Did you bring your wife, Mr. Speaker or your daughter?" Hassal laughed to himself and briefly took notice of the tall, gray-haired man who laid a quick hand on the Speaker's arm and pulled him away from the man in gray and white fatigues nearest him. His attention went immediately back to the small African-American woman. He closed on her with slow steps and nodded to himself when she didn't retreat and met his gaze with a calm that began to irritate him after several seconds. "Claw your way to the top in a man's world, so you think you have no reason to fear me?"

Freeman took a slow breath and another, balancing the thoughts racing through her mind, the comebacks and the threats she wanted to make at odds with her desire not to aggravate this man who had already singled her out. "Oh, I'm afraid of you. I have no doubt you'd kill me where I stand, but I was a little girl, Mr. Whoever You Are, in a neighborhood where I had to look people who might do that in the eye all day. So just for your information, even if you're the last one, you haven't been the first."

Nirmala Hassal frowned, then his face became a mask, his dark eyes emptying as his priorities shifted. He had better things to do than banter words with a woman. "Maybe I'll settle for last, just once, hmph?" There was silence when he raised his gun and aimed it directly at the Senator's forehead but the charge of energy in the air made it suddenly seem as if it should have sparked on every bit of metal in the room. Freeman's hands, hanging at her sides as she stood between the two men who had moved her before the leader, were the only sign of change in her attitude. They clenched against her thighs and rattled against the beaded skirt of the dark blue dress but her eyes never left the man before her. He held her gaze a moment more and then dropped the gun back to his side. "You win for now. I won't kill you." He stopped speaking and eyed the rest of the room, giving her a moment to adjust to the news and relax – before he fired.

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"You think anybody knows what's going on here yet?"

"Not yet. It hasn't even been ten minutes since we got out of the elevator shaft."

Chloe nodded and continued walking through the huge, white-tile and stainless steel kitchen, glancing at her twisted and gray reflection on the massive freezer door. She'd given up toting her shoes around; they were too noisy to wear and she couldn't run in them regardless. Her pantyhose were still tied in a knot around her left arm. She grimaced when she realized she couldn't run in this dress very well either. Four hundred dollars out the window.

Jack turned from assessing the contents of the cutlery drawer when he heard the grating sound of cloth on scissors, watching with regret and respect as Chloe O'Brian used a pair of poultry shears to attack the dress she had spent most of last Saturday finding, a scowl on her face as she got as far as she could and looked up at him. "Here, cut the rest of this." She handed him the thick-handled scissors and turned around, the already cut ends of her dress trailing behind her like coattails; the dress was now a ragged two inches above her knees. Jack Bauer stared at the shears in his hand and then knelt down to do as she asked. He dropped them on the counter when he finished and she turned back to face him. "Thanks. Did you find anything we could use?"

"I found something I can use. I can't ask you to cut someone's throat."

"Now isn't the time to be stupid, Jack. If it's cut someone's throat or watch you die, what do you think I'd do? I might not do it as great but I can do it. Besides… my hands aren't clean, you know? I've had to shoot people. When I feed somebody intel they use it to kill people." Chloe scowled and pulled open the cutlery drawer again and kept her eyes on Bauer for a moment, long enough for him to drop his gaze back to the knives arranged in neat rows, blade down, in order by size. His eyes went to the heavier ones and a moment later he pulled one out and shut the drawer. The blade was thick and long and slightly serrated; the hilt was a marbled black and gold ceramic. "See how this feels."

Chloe took it from him with a carefully blank expression, hefting it a few times and then tossing it up to tumble back in her hand. "It's heavy; it's good." She looked at the two larger ones he'd tucked under his belt and then backed up a few steps and bent over, retrieving the pile of black cloth from the ground that had once been the hem of her dress. She tied it around her waist twice and wove the knife he had selected for her into the double strands. Her expression was tense but determined when she looked up to meet his eyes. "Let's go find a computer or a way out of here."

Jack nodded and started to turn to lead the way out of the service kitchen on the tenth floor, reaching back for her hand as they headed back to the doorway, taking up positions on either side of it. They moved the next stairwell and stood on either side of the door, not looking each other in the eye, breathing silently with their mouths, Bauer wishing he was seeing anything else out the corner of his eye but Chloe O'Brian. She stood quietly, her expression blank and wiped her palm on her dress before she drew the knife, inverting her grip on it so that her thumb would be braced against the end of the handle if she had to drive it home. Finally meeting her eye, he returned her nod and pointed downward, indicating that she should go low.

Jack eased the stairwell door open, certain there was no one behind it but taking no chances. The lock snicked open on a new and well-oiled mechanism and offered them a silent and empty space beyond it. Emergency lights lit the stairs going both up and down. They slid through the opening and Jack eased the door back shut quickly and silently.

Chloe glanced at the two offered paths. "Which way?"

"No choice, down, it's our best chance to find one them alone; they'll be looking for us soon if they haven't started." Bauer fell silent and Chloe thought for a moment that he was simply listening, until she saw the distant cast to his eyes. In the moment of quiet, between the dangers, she suddenly understood just how much he didn't want to be here. Worry creasing the fine lines of her face, Chloe took one last hard listen and stepped into his arms, burying her face in his chest for a moment before looking up.

Her voice was barely more than a whisper as her lips cleared his cheek. "We'll get out of this. We have to, we're together."

Jack let the moment, let the danger go, for an instant, long enough to kiss her back and then pushed her from him at arms length, her once elegant dress was in tatters, her hose were tied around her arm, a scrap of cloth held a long kitchen knife in place at her side and her hands, legs, and face were oil-smeared from their trip down the elevator shaft. He held her eyes for several seconds and then allowed himself one last smile. "I just wanted to tell you something before we deal with whatever's down there. I've honest to God never seen you look more beautiful."

Chloe held the hand he placed on her jaw more tightly to her face, her cheek pushing against it in a strange and twisted smile. "You know the crazy part about that? I believe you. Let's get out of here."

Bauer let go of her and led the way down, moving quickly and quietly, pausing at each darkened landing and waiting. They fell into a quick pattern, stalking and moving quickly down the next flight of stairs and the next, sliding against the back wall so that anyone looking up or down the stairwell would have no means to see them. When they reached the third floor the ease of their descent ended; a man stood in the doorway, wearing gray and white urban camo, lean of build but so filled with pent up energy that he was pacing the narrow confines of the landing that led out to the third floor. Kneeling low, breathing open-mouthed, they spent several minutes watching him, long enough to establish a pattern to his movements.

Chloe slid back on her haunches against the wall as Jack finally retreated from the inside corner. "What do we do?"

"We can't let him signal for help. When he turns his back the fourth time, we move. I'll tackle him but you have to move in with me and take his walkie-talkie."

Chloe nodded, falling into the pattern she'd been taught in the limited field training she'd been forced to endure, follow the lead of the senior agent. On his fourth turn, they moved, racing down the stairs the moment his back was to them. In the narrow stairwell, he hit the wall in less than a second, propelled by Bauer's weight slamming him forward before he could turn to even raise a weapon. It was over before it had started. An instant after he struck the wall, Chloe was beside him, snatching the radio from his belt as he dropped to the floor. Bauer took the pistol from his holster at the same time and with calm efficiency back-handed him with the grip, inflicting a concussion that would keep him out. To Chloe's surprise however, he suddenly hauled the unconscious figure to his feet and braced him against the wall, then slowly opened the door and looked out into the hallway. When he leaned back in the door, he met her eyes coolly, a mask of distant concentration now on his face. She wondered if he knew she could see the regret and anger that was still beneath it.

"Chloe, I need you to do something."

"Just tell me. You don't have to ask, okay?"

"Untie one of his shoes."

She obeyed immediately, pulling apart the top knot and leaving the black threads trailing. Her eyes were full of questions when she stood up but she had her answer without voicing one of them. Without a word of preamble, she helped him hold up the unconscious figure at the top of the downward leading flight of stairs.

"On three."

O'Brian merely nodded and listened to him count, and as soon as he'd reached the ordered number, threw the man slumped between them down the concrete stairs with all her might. He slammed forward sickeningly and landed on his face with a bone-cracking thud that drew a grimace from both of them. What was obviously just now a body slid bonelessly down the rest of the stairs. As it stopped moving Bauer dragged his eyes over to the face of the woman who had listened to him do much the same thing many times, and saw she was meeting his eyes without any emotion but determination.

"Why did we do that? I don't care if he's dead, but they're still gonna' know we're here if we take his weapons."

"Because I want whoever's doing this to think they have in internal problem, too."

Chloe took a deep breath and was about to ask him what he meant when Bauer suddenly darted out the doorway and came back a few seconds later, a mostly empty bottle of shiraz in his hand. "I saw this out in the hallway; it's how I got the idea. It might give us more time if whoever is behind this suddenly starts wondering about his own men." With that, he trotted down the steps bottle in hand and hauled the corpse upright against the wall. Blood from his broken facial bones gorged out of his nose but Bauer ignored it, holding open the mouth and pouring in the rest of the wine. There was no swallowing reflex from the corpse but gravity eventually took over. Bauer poured what remained on the clothing of the man not covered in blood so that the stain was obvious, then crashed the bottle against the cement and inserted the broken off neck into the dead hand of the man they had killed.

Chloe watched all of it without judgment. This was why they would survive, because Jack, better than any agent she'd ever supported, understood the importance of the details. She took the pistol from him when he returned up the stairs and chambered it quickly, holding it ready and moving up the other stairs a few steps, listening for any sign that they'd been noticed. Jack arranged the other accoutrements he'd taken from the body on his own, the rifle over his shoulder, the spare clip of ammunition down his shirt, and the real fighting knife in his belt. "Have you tried the walkie-talkie?" he asked as Chloe, satisfied that their assault had been unheard, came back down the concrete stairs.

"No, and we shouldn't try it here. If they can trace the signal they'll find this guy and know we're armed. We should try and find a computer and see if I can do something with it. Now that we have guns I think we should go up and maybe get over the interference, up to the roof. Better chance of me getting a laptop in the penthouses, too."

Jack looked at her for a long second and smiled. "I'm supposed to be the strategist here."

"Yeah but now we need tech stuff and I'm the geek."

"They'll have the lobby guarded, anyway. I was thinking we could bypass it and get down to the garage. There will be plenty of bullet-proof vehicles down there but they'd know that. All right, let's go." His took her arm and hurried them silently up the stairwell, the rifle at pointing at the gaps in the railings as they slowly and silently moved toward the roof.

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Freeman fell to the floor without a sound, defiance in her eyes even as they closed, her hands griping the bullet wound low on her side. It was impossible to tell if it was close enough to have struck more than fatty tissue and muscle. The Senator was a slender woman, her trunk narrow and tapering, barely an ounce of fat on her and thus her chance of an organ being struck greater. Blood welled up from the wound and added a cold purplish gleam to the beaded blue gown. Nirmala looked up from the woman, noting she was still breathing, then his eyes swept the rest of the women, drawn to one as she moved forward, her long white gown making her stand out against the darkness outside the windows. "Your volunteering to be next is foolish, not brave. I know who you are, Mrs. Logan. I didn't expect you to be here but it hardly changes my plans."

"I wasn't volunteering to be your next victim. I was volunteering to listen to you, to help you negotiate. If you know who I am, you know how many people will listen to me."

Hassal let himself be open to an unguarded moment of surprise. "You're wise for one I was told was a madwoman."

"Well, that should teach you not to believe everything you hear. Do you accept my offer?" Martha Logan's chin was up if trembling and as much as she wanted to share a look to gather strength from the friends and colleagues around her, she kept her eyes on the tall, swarthy, scarred man in front of her. She'd faced down a President of the most powerful nation in the world, she reminded herself. She was wasn't about to cave in to a terrorist of some piss-ant country or a piss-ant cause.

"I'll consider it… and let me guess your condition, that someone be allowed to help Senator Freeman?"

Holding his jaws clamped on the far side of the room, Bill Buchanan watched the exchange of words and nearly palpable energy radiate between Martha Logan and the man she had stepped forward to face. His gun was now holstered and his posture relaxed, a man who felt still in control of the situation. Good, if he felt he still had the upper hand he would be more inclined to talk, to give them something, anything to find a weakness or an opening.** "**You're wise for someone I should consider a madman."

"Not a madman, Miss Logan, just one who, like your agents might, considers himself to have a mission." He smiled very slightly and stepped back, ordering his men to give the female hostages more space. They did, backing off but keeping their weapons raised. Martha Logan moved forward into the widening gap, going to her knees beside the black woman and taking her hand, "Claire, can you hear me? Claire?"

Freeman opened her eyes and diverted what their was of her strength to suddenly returning Martha Logan's grip. "Whatever they want, don't let them have it. Not for my sake. Do you hear me? Not for me. If I die, let me go in peace. That means no one else does for my sake."

"No one else is dying here. Do you understand? We don't even know what they want yet. Now, shut up. We're going to get this bleeding stopped." Logan looked up then and came to her feet, looking the nearest of the gunmen in the eye as she crossed over to the nearest sofa and snared two large pillows off of it and returned to Freeman, unzipping their bright green covers and lifting Freeman's legs onto the uncovered foam interiors. Her eyes returned to the thin, swarthy man. "I need to borrow your knife to cut her dress open or you can do it for me."

The gunmen, who had met Logan's eyes when she spoke glanced away from her to Hassal, who, watching from a few yards away, nodded. "You know to shoot her if she tries anything." The shorter man nodded and drew the knife from his belt, dropping it to the ground and kicking it over to the former First Lady. Nirmala Hassal watched it all with a detached sneer, the last bit of attention he paid to any of it was the sound of a very dour "Thank you" from the lips of Martha Logan and the sound of the knife rending the cloth and rattling against the beading of the blood-soaked gown. He had other matters to worry over now. Men to speak with, men who would make the things he needed to happen happen. He circled the glass-walled room, pausing to pick up a glass of water from one of the abandoned portable bars. Sipping it slowly, he continued onward, stopping before the clutch of male hostages in their dark suits and searching their faces until he found the one he wanted. "Speaker Dominguez. I believe you are the man I need, the closest man here to the Presidency of America."

Richard Dominguez looked the man in camouflage in the eyes but only for a moment, his jaw working tensely. "This country has a policy of not negotiating with terrorists. You know that. If you've managed to pull off an operation this elaborate, you must have done your homework."

Bill Buchanan looked away from the shorter man, pitying him and regretting he'd been selected. His face was flush and already starting to gleam with sweat. He'd never been in danger his entire life other than of losing an election. He had no stomach for what was going on; their only hope now was that the man speaking to him would realize he was going to get nowhere with using him if he went into cardiac arrest or panicked.

Hassal smirked to himself as he the short, heavy man before him went from flush to pale when he rested his hand on the butt of his pistol. "I am not here to enter into negotiations, Mr. Speaker. I will get what I want, or your country will get what it doesn't want. The suffering of my country will be visited in a very small way onto yours. I'm offering a chance for you not to learn the hard way."

Buchanan kept his eyes down, suddenly suspecting that whatever was going on here had as much to do with something outside this room than it did with what was happening within it. Killing a few politicians wasn't going to make a country suffer much that had protocols in place for the loss of leaders, no matter who they were. The threat was something far more significant than the death of anyone who was in here, and, of course, Dominguez was very unlikely to put that together right now.

Nirmala Hassal sighed to himself and patted the gun impatiently. "You have nothing to say to me, Mr. Speaker? I'm a very good shot, you know. I could take out Mrs. Logan from here. Would that inspire you to respond? She has, after all, offered to speak on my behalf, but I thought you might want that chance over a woman most famous for betraying her husband."

Buchanan's head snapped up at that, his eyes boring into their captor's for an uncontrolled second that was still long enough to capture the man's attention. "And just who are you?"

Now wasn't the time to be clever or create a ruse. Jack was still possibly free out there somewhere, so was Chloe, better that they think CTU was represented here. "Bill Buchanan, Director of CTU Los Angeles. And you?"

"Well, then, the first relevant question I've heard all evening." The swarthy man smiled and gave a mocking bow of his head. "I'll tell you who I am. I don't matter, you see. My name is Nirmala Hassal. I am a general in the People's Hand of Freedom of Kajananphur, and now your host." He laughed, two short deep bleats, well realizing he was amusing only himself.

Dominguez, spared the general's attention for a few moments, had used them to regain some composure for himself. "All right, then, General Hassal. For now I will deal with you as a military man of rank from a foreign hostile country. What is it you want?"

"What we all want. What your founders wanted. Equality. My actions are no different from your Washington's or your Jefferson's, only my means and resources."

"Why don't you spare us the analogies and justifications, General?" Buchanan interjected, cutting him off. "I'm sure we'd all like to know what this is about if you're in a position to tell us."

"Of course I'm in a position to tell you." Hassal's gaze went from Dominguez to Buchanan, a slight bit of ire in it as he realized Buchanan was trying to lure him out and see if he were the primary force behind the take-over. He snarled at himself internally for his quick and short reply, knowing it had raised the man's suspicions. He would have to guard more against this one in the future. "I want something surprisingly reasonable, and something your country is in a ready position to give me. You may simply regret our having it at all but your people are no more deserving of survival than ours."

"General Hassal, let's put our cards on the table. You have a room full of hostages at high levels in the American government and you want something we don't want you to have. If you are the man to deal with, let's hear it so we can end this for these people and come to some kind of arrangement."

Hassal hissed in a breath and stared at the taller man for a moment while he got his temper back under control. "Very well. I think you'll be shocked at how simple this is and how little we want in exchange for the lives of those here… and elsewhere." He paused to let the words sink in and with a stab of disappointment saw that Buchanan already realized that there was more to what was happening here than the lives taken and at risk already. The moment lost, he moved on. "The United States currently has an "Ohio" class nuclear submarine patrolling 550 miles off the shores of my country, a vessel equipped with 24 Trident II D-5 missiles in its arsenal. We have the means to convert those submarine launched missiles to ones we can launch from land. If those missiles are not released to our possession, not only will everyone here die, but so will a substantial number of people, between one and two million by our estimates, in New York City."

Dominguez, glad to have let Buchanan take over, stirred to life then. "You can't possibly be serious. How can you manage something like that without--?"

"Without people working on the inside of our means of attack, of course we couldn't." Hassal laughed aloud for several seconds. "This operation was years in the planning, nearly a decade, started right after the uprising of my people, one that followed your country beginning to back our enemies because you disapproved of our new leadership. The great America, so arrogant, so sure that we were in awe of your power that you mistook our silence over your backing of Tyandakar as fear and complacence. You forgot for all the years leading up to the people retaking power, we were your allies, we had access to your technology, our youth were educated in your schools. Now, we are simply using all that you have taught us for ourselves, the same any smart student does when he has a good but unworthy teacher."

"All right, that's enough!" Buchanan took a step closer to the general, unfazed by the gun that instantly returned to Hassal's hand and the rifles of the others now pointed at his chest. "Just exactly how do you plan to carry out your threat if you don't get those warheads?"

"That would be telling, Mr. Buchanan. Let me share this. By a means known only to myself and the others loyal to Kajananphur, working here and elsewhere, a toxin is set to be released into the water supply of New York City, a toxin that will cause death for some within minutes, for others within hours, and for which there is no cure. Where will it be released? Perhaps in the pipes beneath the city – there are hundreds of thousands of miles of them it seems, or at the source, or at the pumping stations. When will it be released? That's up to you and your sincerity. The children will die first, Mr. Buchanan, their small quick-hearted little bodies in agony, and then the old and the frail, and the rest will live long enough to watch their children and their parents and grandparents die before they die. So, Mr. Buchanan, do we have a starting point to begin the arrangements or are you and these fine representatives of the people prepared to let this happen and watch each other die, too?"


	4. Chapter 4

"**How many floors is this damn place?"**

"**I don't know, Chloe. Just keep going. We're almost there. We're damn lucky we got this far."**

"**I know. I know. I don't understand why we're not seeing more of them though. You don't think they're just following us, do you? Seeing if we know something?"**

**Jack glanced up at the doorway out to the floor they were approaching – floor 32. He was tiring himself now; the day spent out on the training field catching up with him as they pressed forward. Chloe was lagging behind him, twenty flights of stairs or their equivalent were even less routine in her day. She was pulling herself up with the handrail almost as much as her legs. Jack caught her when she joined him on the landing and nearly fell, tripping over one of the reddish emergency lights embedded in the floor. "We'll stop here for a minute, and no, this isn't the first night the hotel was open, but there weren't that many guests yet. This is being done with a minimal force but someone had to let them in, maybe even controlled how many guests would be here tonight. Anyone who works for the hotel we can't trust, no matter who they are."**

**Chloe stood still for several moments, glad to not be moving. "Damn. Well, that makes sense," she finally huffed, getting her breath back after several seconds. **

"**By now they've found the elevator jammed open, though."**

**Leaning against the gray concrete, the railing pressed into his back, Jack nodded and took hold of it. "Yeah, so we need to keep moving. You ready?"**

**Chloe scowled but nodded, resetting her weapons more firmly into her improvised gun belt. "I'm skipping the gym the rest of this week." The concrete cold on her bare feet she started upward again, going first because she should move more quietly. Jack followed her as closely as he dared, unhappy but resigned to the situation. Chloe, like all agents, had undergone basic field training; it was a necessity for an analyst to understand, hands-on, what an agent out in the field was facing and even though her actual experience was still virtual for the most part, he could see that it and her training was still with her. She moved sideways up the staircase, her gun trained upward, the raggedly shortened hem of her dress fluttering. **

**They moved up a few more floors before seeing the doors they'd been heading for. The letters "PH" were printed in foot-high letters on the doors above them. Jack drew even with O'Brian and stopped them both. "Let's wait here for few minutes. They may have men and equipment on the roof themselves."**

"**You're bringing that up _now_?!" Her accusatory glare faded a moment later. "Never mind, I'm sorry. I should have thought of that. Some analyst."**

"**You're not trained to think out here, I am." **

**The minutes Bauer insisted they wait dragged on, Chloe held in the battery and checked her damaged cell phone for the time as they crouched on the stairs just below the last landing, listening for the sound of footfalls, voices, or whatever other sound of habitation they could detect. Above them, silence reigned, long enough eventually that Bauer came to his feet again and wrapped his hand around Chloe's arm to signal her forward again, but this time as she moved, Bauer moved with her, the rifle he'd taken from the dead man aimed upward, leveling out as they gained the landing before the penthouse door. The tiny, wire-meshed window looking into the room cast a dim stream of light into the semi-darkness. Jack pushed past her and peered through it carefully, prepared to wait again. **

**This time, however, the wait was short. Thirty seconds after he had begun watching, a man moved into view, armed as the other man had been and wearing desert-tone camouflage. A rifle hung over his shoulder and a cigarette from his lips. He was short and muscular, bald save for a few struggling hairs at the back of his head. Jack guessed him to be in his late thirties and watching him move knew he'd be a fair opponent but what they needed yet was stealth. There was still enough time for those who would be looking for them to be hunting downstairs. He doubted they would think that anyone would have opted to go back up 20 plus flights only to trap themselves on the roof, at least not yet.**

**Bauer moved to get a better look at the far side of the suite, his breath catching up with him. The rooms beyond the closed door were, as he expected spacious and elegant, decorated with impressionist style paintings; between them were two windows that afforded a view of the city and the black mass of the Pacific beyond it. The short man walked into his view again, talking into a walkie-talkie and flicking the ashes of the cigarette into the tan and brown carpet. Jack moved back from the door as he began to turn and allowed himself a tight smile as he did. In the flash of his new perspective, he saw it, a laptop computer sitting on the shelving unit next to the window, closed but with a light still on in the front. He turned back with the cold smile still on his lips.**

"**They have a computer in there. It's on."**

"**Then we need to get in there."**

"**How fast can you get a message to CTU or… someone?"**

**O'Brian shrugged and shook her head. "I don't know. It depends on how the computer is set up."**

"**Then we'll take it so you can have as much time as possible." Bauer turned back to his observations, watching only for a moment, however, before shedding his acquired weapons and taking the pistol from O'Brian. "When he disappears into the next room, we'll go. We don't want to kill him if we don't have to; they 'd know where we are."**

**Chloe nodded, feeling her exhaustion from the 20 plus flights of stairs fade as the adrenalin started up again. She stood with her eyes on the concrete floor for a moment and then stood up on her toes and quickly kissed him, surprised a split-second later to find him barely responsive. Instead of being offended or confused, she bounced back to her heels. This was Jack, the man she knew, who at this moment had only this sudden and unwanted mission on his mind. He rested his head on hers for a moment and then went back to the tiny window, feeling her eyes on his back as she watched in unhappy but understanding silence, knowing not to distract him if she wanted them to survive and succeed. **

**The door opened quietly, its mechanisms new and smooth. He slipped through it as soon as the shorter man had vanished around to the side wall that jutted out into the living area facing west. Jack crossed the room and slid down the wall behind which the other man had vanished, glancing around it quickly to see if he were approaching the open area again. The wall led down to what looked like a kitchen and before the door next to it was a stack of dirty clothes. Dishes were piled on the small table toward the back of the room. **

**Whoever these people were, they'd been here for days. Whatever was going on, someone in authority here was part of the plan . **

**Those two pieces of information added to his nearly non-existent knowledge of what was going on; he cut across the room in the other direction, snatching up the computer and glancing around at the shelf where it had been. A wireless card lay next to it and a white, grounded extension cord. Even if there were no electricity, that would still have its uses. Bauer grabbed them as well and stepped back, barely in time to avoid the man returning from the kitchen. Now they could only hope that the computer was not something that would be missed very quickly. Jack felt somewhat safe assuming it was. The man moved like a fighter, he looked bored, his wandering around the room had been listless. All of it indicated to Jack that this was a guard left behind, not someone strategically involved in the situation.**

**Chloe O'Brian felt the air she'd been keeping from entering her lungs flood into her as she opened the door again and Bauer slipped back through with what she hoped would become a critical piece of equipment in his hands. She eased the door shut and turned to him, taking the computer and the card. Bauer kept the grounded cord for himself and collected his weapons again, tucking the pistol into his belt that Chloe had been using. She had a far more important item now. His hands free, he led her down the small hallway before them, toward the hatch for the outside door that would put them out on the roof. **

**It was a chilly night but not cold. Los Angeles gleamed around them in every direction but neither took notice of the view. Her feet stung by the cold grit of the asphalt, Chloe struggled to keep up with Bauer, not sure where he was taking them but knowing he had some sort of goal by he way he was moving. The wind cut through her shredded dress at this altitude but she pressed forward, the laptop clutched to her chest like an infant. They crossed the roof in the darkness until they reached the center, until they reached a spot between the cover offered by the backside of a huge, still functional, floodlight and the base of a round metal pole. Breathless and chilled, Chloe looked up and managed a smile as Bauer stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around her. "What are we doing here, I mean, at this spot?"**

"**If your signal doesn't work, mine might."**

**Chloe stared at him for a moment more and then backed up, kneeling down with the laptop in the shelter of the light and finding there was a bit of warmth radiating from it as it blasted a beam upward. She opened the laptop and slid the wireless card that had dented itself into her right hand into place. A frustrated grunt escaped her as it powered up. She could read the icon at the bottom that told her the battery was half-way down, but that was it. The rest of the icons were lost to her in an Eastern language she only rudimentarily recognized. **

_"_**_Crap_!"**

**Jack turned around, knowing the tone well and preparing himself for another set back. "What's wrong?"**

"**Well, I think we both assumed it would be in English when we took this thing. I'll see if I can recognize enough icons to set up the card." She pulled the wireless card out and slipped it back in again, fighting the urge to slam it into place. To her unspeakable relief another icon lit up in the tool bar, a tiny antenna that flashed green but after a few moments flashed red and then back to green. "We're above the interference enough that I'm getting a signal. You'd almost have to with the wireless towers around here."**

"**What about your phone?"**

**Chloe pulled it out of the pocket hidden in the dress and turned it around. The screen was black and she fumbled back in her pocket and retrieved the battery from the broken casing Jack had turned into an improvised screwdriver. She snapped them both in, or tried. She tried again. This time the battery dropped out in her hand. Knowing what must have happened, she reached inside and felt the sharp, tiny prick she expected. "No. Damn it. The phone's broken now. The battery popping in and out busted the spring. We only have the computer to do this."**

**Jack stopped what he was doing behind her and knelt down on one knee. "Can you get a signal out then?"**

"**Yeah, I can, and I can get it on a CTU frequency. The numbers are working the same as far as programming the transmission, but it would be gibberish. I don't know this language and that's how the keys are marked."**

"**How long are the intervals where the signal is regular?"**

"**Let me see your watch."  
**

**Jack extended his arm to her and she pulled back the sleeve of his shirt, her eyes flashing back and forth between the second hand and the green antenna vs. the red antenna. "Okay, we can get a signal out for forty-three seconds, and then it has to reset itself… to… overcome the interference. God, you're freezing." Chloe stopped talking and looked up at the man on the cold tar roof next to her, rubbing his hands in both her own though her own were cold. "Are you okay?"**

**The hell below them escaped Bauer's attention for a moment, enough to let him remember what he had that was worth fighting it to save. Chloe had taken his other hand and was rubbing it just as briskly, and in the darkness he could see that the goings on beneath them right now meant nothing to her compared to her concern for him. It wasn't just the cold that worried her, he knew, but all the rest that came before it, all that he had suffered and the collective weight of it that was bearing down on him again as another nightmare was acted out beneath them. She knew. She knew his dread, his anger, his frustration, and that it was all bundled into a small tidy package, easily hidden, to the rest of the world but to her a scar beneath a scalpel, an old wound slowly being reopened. To anyone else, he would have simply dismissed their concern of the chill wind scraping at his flesh, the memories of shivering nights in a metal cell, and frigid saltwater poured over open wounds. Chloe O'Brian, however, received the answer she deserved; the only answer that would ever pass between them: the truth.**

"**No, I'm freezing. Let's get this done."**

**She fumbled with the touchpad, her fingers beginning to stiffen, guessing that "START" was still "START" even if it was in mystical squiggles. She guessed what was probably the program list and scanned the icons, clicking on the one that matched the tiny graphic in the toolbar, muttering, while she was on her knees anyway, a quick prayer of thanks to Bill Gates for standardizing the world.**

**A window popped up, still in an Eastern language she couldn't translate but the configuration was familiar enough and interspersed into the text were a few icons she did recognize. "Okay, it'll transmit but what do we send?"**

**To her surprise, Jack suddenly offered her a cold, thin smile and turned the keyboard away from her, "Something I hope Curtis remembers enough of his time in the military to figure out." Chloe watched as he struck a seemingly random key three times, then the one next to it three times, hit what was still obviously the space bar, the second key again three times, the space bar, the second key again three times, and then went back to the original key three times. He struck the space bar a half-dozen times and then repeated his keystrokes identically several more. "Can you set that to repeat?"**

**Unenlightened but too cold for the moment to press him for answers, Chloe nodded and pulled the keyboard back to herself. "Done. They'll just get a random signal though. The only thing they'll be able to trace is which tower it's from."**

**Shivering, Jack smiled again as they stood up and headed back toward the double-edged sword of the roof door. "They'll find us. Look." He pointed upwards and Chloe saw what he had been doing behind her as she struggled with the foreign computer. The spotlight she had been kneeling next to, drawing on its meager warmth had had a job she hadn't noticed, illuminating the American flag atop the Cerulean Cove, a flag which now, nearly straight in the stiff breeze and the small point of light, hung upside down.**

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**Curtis Manning looked down at the bullpen out of habit. They would call him if something came up but he was too accustomed to being downstairs to just sit up in a glass and concrete tower and wait. It only took him a few seconds, anyway, and then he could go back to the thrill of the budget report before him. He didn't care what aspect of government duty one entered, as soon as you attained any sort of rank, you ended up filling out budget reports.**

**The blur of figures rolled across the screen. His assistant had changed to red all the ones the Congressional Budget Office peon had flagged for clarification, something just over a third of them. Curtis smiled to his own surprise, before they'd stopped Bierko and upended the now disgraced President Logan's plans, it had always been over half.**

**He clicked on the first figure and attached a link to the report that justified it into the cell. He'd reached the third one when a knock came on the glass door of what had been Jack Bauer's office. A small dark-haired woman was outside of it. The first clue that something was wrong was that she was empty handed; she wasn't bringing him a report, she wanted him to see something that had come across a screen downstairs.**

"**Come in."**

**There was an unsure expression on the analyst's face as Emilia Stafford opened the door just enough for her small frame and slid through the opening. "I'm sorry, Mr. Manning. I don't know what to make of this but I'm picking up a repeating signal from down near LAX. It's not specified as far as location but it's on a usually secure CTU-reserved private priority frequency." **

"**It's not a message of any sort?"**

"**Well, it's a message of some sort, but it's just two characters repeating themselves in a minority dialect spoken in Kajananphur, we think. It's on Station 2." She stepped over to the desk as he pulled it up, hovering behind him a few steps. "There it is, three of one letter, three groups of three of the other letter, then three of the first letter. Phonetically, it's our equivalent of "B", "L", "B" if that helps, but that's it, it just keeps repeating for forty-three seconds. Then it breaks, and then the same message starts up again. We've isolated the signal to a five mile radius in Culver City, centered down where all the hotels are. It's coming off a wireless tower there."**

**Manning had tuned her out, scanning not the letters but the pattern of them. Three single letters, three strings each of the next letter, then back to the same single letter, a short sequence, a long one, the short one again. Short… long… short. Short… long… short. Short… long… short. Curtis Manning sat back, a chill going through him that was familiar yet net never failed to unnerve him. "You won't have any reason to know this, Miss Stafford. It was stupid, but they stopped teaching Morse Code years ago. Those letters aren't what you think; that pattern is representing three dots, three dashes, and three dots: that's a good old' S.O.S."**

**Emilia Stafford jumped back as Manning came to his feet, following him to return to her station as he ran down the steel steps and scanned the bullpen. "I want everyone on this signal from downtown picked up from Station 2. Get me the traffic cameras from the D.O.T. radiating out from the cell tower and someone get me a line to Bill Buchanan. We have a situation near LAX and we have to find out exactly where."**

**Stafford retook Station 2 as the others around her began tapping into it to derive what they could from their own areas of specialization about the signal. She'd done what she was able with it. "Mr. Manning, Mr. Buchanan isn't home. I talked to him yesterday. He didn't seem very happy about where he was going to be tonight but he said we could reach him by cell."**

"**Then try."**

**Stafford pulled up the private directory, first trying the shielded landline on her desk, then her CTU phone, then her personal phone on a different carrier just for the hell of it. Manning watched her trade one device for another with a growing sense of dread. Whatever the reason Buchanan wasn't answering, whatever was going on was now his fish to fry or… burn. He turned as Stafford shrugged helplessly at him and went back to trying Buchanan's home numbers in case he was there. After that she would try Karen Hayes'. "Eric, anything on those traffic cameras?"**

"**I'm radiating the search out from the location of the tower, Sir, but no disrespect, this IS Los Angeles."**

**Curtis took a breath and cut off his answer. The younger man was right. "Sorry. Anybody, anything else? Cuts in the power grid? 911 calls in the tower radius?" There was silence only for an answer, that and the clack of computer keys as the search for the source of the trouble began. Stafford sat back in her chair and looked over at the tall, handsome black man trying to psychically pull answers from the air and into the hands of the experts around him. Only after he had their information could he apply his own field of expertise.**

"**I've tried all the numbers we have to reach Mr. Buchanan. He's not responding at all. Karen Hayes isn't answering either."**

**Manning felt himself swallow another lump of ice. That might be as good as another S.O.S. "Okay, notify the FBI that we have a situation, and put LAX on alert. I'm not calling anyone higher than that until we have some information. Then get me the LAPD. We need feet on the ground down there."**

"**Yes, Sir."**

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**They reached the chain link fence side-by-side but the man stopped, holding his weapon to cover his partner as she scrambled over its eight-foot height and hit the ground; she, in turn, returned her weapon to her hand to cover her partner as he followed her over, her eyes on the end of the alley as she crouched on the black pavement. The street just past it was quiet, no sound of running footsteps fading into the darkness. Their quarry had only a few dozen yards lead when he'd fled their first attempt at taking him - when the car had backfired in the street and sent them ducking behind their vehicle.**

"**He's waiting for us," the dark-eyed man muttered. **

"**No, he's not; he's still running."**

"**How do you know?"**

"**I don't hear anything and that's what I'm counting on. Come on." Trusting her partner to follow, the woman moved forward again, weapon poised as she ran, pulling up as she reached the end of the wall and looking at her partner doing the same across the dark alley. Clear of the buildings, they heard it then, the sounds of rapid footfalls, now somehow duller and more tentative, heading north. **

**They broke cover and followed after them and in less than a minute their quarry was in sight, a young man in grey sweatpants and a blue jacket just passing into the pall of a streetlight, the only one working on this particular stretch of road. The lights were shot out so often that the city no longer fixed them without threat of a lawsuit. Their quarry was moving more slowly now, slow enough that they were on him in seconds. The man hung back slightly, enjoying the show as his partner launched herself into a small burst of speed and got hold of the back of the jacket of the youth running before her, strategically yanking "down" and not "back" so that he wouldn't slip out of it. He crashed into the car to his left, rolling over the hood before hitting the ground with the woman on top of him. She twisted a hand into his hair, pulling his head up and struggling only for moment to capture his arm, then his left wrist, and then folding back his thumb from his fingers. He screamed and stopped struggling at once.**

"**Get off me, you bastard!"**

"**Did your mom hate getting flowers for Father's Day?"**

**The boy's head snapped around even though she was still holding his hair; he'd stopped struggling otherwise, fearful of having his thumb joint separated - or worse - going by the pain. "Oh… Sorry. Get off me,… _Bitch_."**

"**I bet you don't get say that as often as you'd like. Now, shut up before I end up on report an eleventh time this month." She glanced up then, snickering at her partner as he pointed the gun at the dark-haired youth with one hand and called in with the other. She changed her grip on the younger man and brought both arms up behind his back, cuffing him and pulling him to his feet with her partner.**

"**How did you know he was still running? We couldn't hear anything."**

**The woman grinned and gave her partner a wry smile, pointing at the stocking feet of her suspect. "I untied his shoes when we frisked him. I figured he'd lose them at some point. Bet they're at the bottom of the fence." She turned from her partner as he threw up his hands in mock frustration and muttered something too rapidly and softly in Spanish for her to understand, stepping her charge back up onto the curb. "Mr. David McCauley, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attor--." The phone at the woman's hip interrupted her, a distinctive two toned chirp followed by two beeps, an innocuous electronic sound in the darkness, not particularly loud but enough to stop the habitual Miranda.**

**The male officer took hold of McCauley, his eyes narrowing as his partner let the phone ring for the second time, lip caught in her teeth on one side, her eyes narrowed, she scowled down at the blinking object on her belt. "You are going answer that, no?"**

**Her eyes lifted to flash in the dim light "I am going to answer it, yes," she replied, lightly mimicking his accent, visibly annoyed but he knew not with him. "It's just if they're calling at this hour… oh, Hell." The woman sat down on the hood of the car she had just crashed over - suspect in hand - flipping open the phone with the same feeling in her gut that Alice must have had on the edge of the rabbit hole. "CTU, this is Detective Gibson."**

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**Bill Buchanan still managed a smile, somehow, as he watched two of the other women help Martha Logan lift and move Senator Freeman onto one of the bright green couches. Blood from the wound in her side quickly started running again, but only at a fraction of the rate it had done so before. Cloths packed with ice now covered the bullet wound but a stream of the blood still left a dark brown streak on the sofa cushions before it could be stopped completely again. Two of the guards gestured the other women back into the huddle, leaving Martha Logan with her patient. But whatever tiny victories they had eked out of their situation here, the larger ones remained out of their grasp.**

**Hassal had walked away from them, his information/threat/allegation that he had the ability to do what he had claimed, cause the deaths of millions was not something Buchanan was inclined to disregard. He had, after all, managed to secure a room full of high level hostages amidst security that Division said should have been able to stop anything. He wondered how many dead had been left throughout the hotel, and how many of the hotel staff were actually Hassal's and had been from the beginning. Whatever he was planning, Hassal felt he had time. He was waiting them out, trying to unnerve them with his threat and walk away. Buchanan glanced at the rest of the male hostages around him, wondering how many of them understood the game that was being played out here. Hassal wanted them thinking about what he had said and would give them no more answers until the time came when he told them what they wanted, after having hopefully unnerved them. **

**Dominguez, now pungent with sweat, brushed Buchanan's arm. "I know he's stalling but is there anything we can do? If there are two million lives at risk, we can't sim--."**

"**Mr. Dominguez, all do respects, keep quiet. For your sake and for your wife's. We have to leave this for him to engage us when he's ready. He's waiting for something and he wants you disturbed when he gets back here. Let him think he's shaken you. If he thinks you're not in control of yourself at least, he'll make a mistake."**

**Hassal had turned to look back at the men being held, the ones to whom he had offered up his plan to gain control of the submarine's warheads. All that had to happen was for that submarine to get close enough for the few ships Kajananphur had at its disposal to close an inescapable ring around it. They would release a group of hostages for each missile transferred and when they were all in the possession of the People's Hand, he intended to let them go, and turn over the locations of the toxic agents intended for the two reservoirs. With little loss of life on their side, the United States would be less likely to act quickly to retrieve the missiles but Bhakti already had a way to stop them from intervening militarily although he wouldn't say what it was. Hassal suspected that the Chinese had something to do with that but such a contingency was for those at the receiving end of the weapons to handle. **

**Hassal glanced around the circular room again, the scent of fear touching his nostrils, the silence of determination vs. terrified reservation and frustration leaving his ears but not his mind empty. He hadn't wanted to do this. He'd had no choice. If there had been another way, he would have chosen a different path, but his family's disgrace was his to bear, the path of redemption offered to him led only one direction, left him a reluctant slave to the restoration of his name. Renouncing and killing his father had barely been a dent in undoing the damage. Others still saw him as the son of the man who had tried to kill the People's Hand, Kathirivan Bhakti's would be assassin. Once the hotel was empty of all but those who were his to command, he would call Bhakti and let him know it was over, to lift the curse on his name and let him die with honor.**

**Hassal sighed, and finished off the drink he had poured himself from the small, grossly decorated bar, then put aside the thought of his own death. It had been with him since the start of this, since his father was found a traitor. It was good to know he would finally be rid of worrying about it.**

**Hassal's moment of relative personal peace was intruded upon a moment later. A man entered from the opening in the side of the massive volcano that dominated the function room, a man well over six feet tall and nearly 300 pounds, all of it muscle, closed the distance between himself and the leader of the assault team with long but somewhat ungainly strides. He let his falling shadow clue the smaller man to turn around; Hassal frowned up at the huge man with irritation.**

**"You left your post."**

**"There is a problem. One of the elevators was found jammed open and one of our guards has been found dead, but we've found no one. The guard looks like he might have been drinking before he was killed."**

**Hassal's frown grew deeper then gave way to a thoughtful pout. "Take a hostage. Do some damage in front of the others, but don't kill him. Leave the tall man with the gray hair alone. I need him to negotiate. He also feels a responsibility for the others. He might give us what we want. We need to know who is missing and then deal with them."**


	5. Chapter 5

They had gotten back inside without drawing attention and looking at his watch Jack knew that, by now, CTU would at least know there was a problem, if not exactly where. LAX would be on alert and CTU would be hunting in the radius of the originating tower's relayed signal for the source. The warmth of returning inside was welcome but the renewed greater risk of detection wasn't. Once again in the stairwell a few floors down from the penthouse, Bauer and O'Brian stopped and sat down, glad for the echo chamber effect that would give them warning, up or down from their location of any movement toward them. They had propped open the door next to them a tiny way to allow them to exit out of it without making a sound.

At a loss for what to do next, they sat down, their arms around each other in the dull glow of the safety lights. Chloe's head dropped down to Bauer's shoulder as the tension ebbed slightly and the cold began to fade from her body. Unaware of it, Jack began to rock her slightly. "I'm sorry. I know you hate this. I know you hate being out in the field."

Still wearing his coat, she tightened her grip round his small waist. "This isn't the field. I mean, it is now but it wasn't supposed to be and you hate it, too. And now, we can't do anything. Even if we could find out who these people are and what they want, we don't have a way to get word out and we don't have a way to escape. You might if you were alone, but I know you don't want to risk it with me. And… don't get mad at me, but that's okay as far as I'm concerned. If we can just hide and be safe and let somebody else take care of this, that's what we should do."

Over her head, Jack simply smiled to himself, "I couldn't be mad at you, but they're going to be looking for us. If we're going to do this, we need to find somewhere to hide. We got the electronic signal out; I put out a distress signal with the flag. They'll eventually find that computer missing so I'm guessing they'll look for us up on the higher floors in the short term. We need to get moving. Maybe get down to the ground floors or the basement while they concentrate up here."

Chloe sighed, then straightened and laced her fingers behind his neck, her thumbs stroking him just behind the ears. Safe for a moment, he closed his eyes and leaned back, listening when she spoke and feeling strength flow gently back into him. "You'll get us out of here, and CTU will stop them. It'll be okay. It'll be okay." She leaned forward and kissed him quickly, not giving him much chance to respond and not expecting him to do so. "Let's go. Should we try a staircase farther way? The elevator we broke into is on this same side of the building."

"We don't know exactly how many people are in on this and the other thing we'll have to do is watch out for the hotel staff, even if they're hostages. This is an inside job. There's no other way for them to have been able to do what's been done here tonight." Chloe sighed as he finished speaking and nodded. Reluctantly, they released each other and stood, still keeping their hands linked as they headed back down the stairs. Jack stopped after a few floors and retrieved his coat from Chloe's shoulders. She watched silently as he tore the sleeve and then opened the door of the landing they were on at the 26th floor. He propped the door open and snared the torn fabric over the door handle on the opposite side and then went down the blue carpeted corridor beyond it far enough to knock over a potted fern. He came back and carefully pulled a trailing bit of the sleeve that wasn't caught up on the door handle back through to the side of the landing, enough that it was easily spotted. Chloe smiled quickly. "Guess you made a run for it here, right?"

"Yeah, I heard something that spooked me." He smiled thinly. "Anything to buy us some time until CTU can isolate this location. Even once they do there's still no guarantee they can get in here. We don't even know why this place has been taken, how or by whom." They started downward again, going as fast as possible but stopping to listen on every landing. At floor 19, they emerged out into the hallway, finding yet another narrow trail of deep blue carpeting and dark paneling designed to look like an old sailing ship. The rooms were empty, the doors locked, but a few of them stood open, expensive personal possessions visible on the beds and other surfaces in the room, jewelry, computers, wallets, and, in the case of one room, a very obvious stash of cocaine. Whoever had intruded upon the first formal function of the Cerulean Cove, robbery was not the issue here.

After another few hundred yards they came upon another set of elevators and stairs. Jack took the knife he had retrieved from the man they had killed and once again wedged the doors open, offering Chloe a quick reassurance that there weren't about to travel down the cables when they had no way of knowing how far down into the darkness they would be going. Another ruse, another red herring. Let them wonder if there was someone using the elevator shafts to move around. They continued onward down the hall, following the new trail of exit signs to another set of stairs and heading downward again in the stop-listen-run pattern that they now followed without a word to each other, knowing well that each minute they remained free and inside was borrowed time.

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Detective Alvarez took a last glance at the perp now seated on the curb and turned his attention to his partner. She was slouched against the roof of the car she had just rolled over, phone still pressed to her ear and eyes rolled back in her head.

"That's all you've got? Seriously?" She sighed and leaned back further.

"Okay, I'll get some people rounded up and get an APB out for "anything weird". When did you start picking the signal up?

"Well, damn, if we don't find something it won't be because you sat on your cute little butt, will it?

"What do you mean "being monitored and recorded" already?

"Landline? Uh… oh… crap. I mean, sorry.

"Well, I didn't know this had gotten to that point yet, not on the basis of "anything weird". I'll have them on it as soon as I call dispatch."

Cassandra Gibson slapped the phone shut and dropped it back onto her belt, dusting off her tan blazer as she stood up from the hood of the car and glared up at the shot out street light. "CTU needs me about a search down near LAX. We're looking for we don't know what, perpetrated by we don't know whom, in the general vicinity of we don't know where… exactly, and "why" hasn't been invited to the party yet. All they have is a repeated SOS on a secure CTU frequency being sent through a wireless tower."

Alvarez smirked and flicked his eyebrows. "So, you are supposed to find something out of three nothings?"

"Our tax dollars at work. At least you're not paying your own salary twice. Let's get Shoeless Joe back to the station. You get to process him and… I get to go ghostbusting."

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Dennis Maza rolled up the window of the police cruiser and sat back, glancing at his partner. "That was it. We're supposed to find something that "doesn't look right"? Think Gibson's been working vice so long the evidence fumes got to her."

Lawrence Corbin growled and rolled his eyes. "Keep that to yourself. I don't want a mysteriously dead partner on my file. Get moving; we got all of Century City to find something weird in."

"Great. Hey, at least we're not in West Hollywood. I'd have to ride the brakes." Maza started the cruiser and headed out down the tree-lined street, turning off of the small thoroughfare and onto the tangle of roads that went through, over, and even under the complex of Los Angeles International Airport, making a sharp turn on an elevated roadway that would drop them down past the car rental lots and onto West Century Blvd. A stretch of road dominated by massive chain hotels came into view, growing up around them as they reached the palm-lined street and headed east. Even a street back, the newest one was tall enough to tower over the others.

Corbin leaned forward and glanced up at it as they slowed for a light. "That's the pirate one, isn't it? It's new, meaning we haven't dragged anybody out of it yet."

Maza grinned and lowered the window again, leaning out for a breath of cooler air and a break from the fading scent of his own onion-tainted lunch. He looked down the street at the tall, circular building, its blue glazed facade reflecting the lights around it, more so because there were few lights visible within it.

Corbin became aware that his partner was staring at it for more than reasons of newness a few minutes later, when the traffic around them began honking their horns and the car immediately behind them suddenly found an opening in traffic and darted through the now green light. "Dennis, what the hell are ya' doing? We're gonna' have to give ourselves a ticket."

Dennis Maza turned back to his partner, his steel-blue eyes wide beneath the blond buzz-cut. "You wanted weird, we might have found it. Look on top of the new hotel." He started the car forward again and waved an apology at the car behind him, then began picking up speed. The angle to the top of the hotel steepened, making it nearly impossible for Corbin to do what he had asked in time. He saw what had caught his partner's attention long enough though, his partner who had been in the Navy for six years before signing up for the police, the American flag atop the Cerulean Cove was flapping in the stiff, high-altitude breeze, upside down in the glow of a spotlight.

It took them just shy of ten minutes to reach the hotel in the late evening traffic. They pulled into the back parking lot, sitting for a moment and simply watching to see if anything else drew their attention as strange. There were few lights still lit in the hotel, a floor not quite half-way up was lit in full, as were the penthouses. Only a few of the other rooms had lights on. The only thing that struck them even more odd was the relative dimness of the lobby as they drove past. No one passed before the windows as they watched.

"What do you think?" Corbin asked, brushing crumbs from the black creases of his uniform.

"Let's call it in as a precaution, but let's see if there's anyone in there, too. If it's big enough to involve CTU we don't want to look like we're pushing the panic button. It might just be some prank to see how long it'll take for the flag to get noticed or some butthead employee thinking they're making a political point and we'll have pulled resources away from the real thing." They exited the car, Maza pulling out his radio as they circled around the huge building and continued surveying it. The entrance to the underground parking lot was shut, the heavy steel doors set against the ground and locked. They saw no one in the parking lot or outside on the grounds and their pace had slowed by the time they reached the terraced entrance up to dim lobby. Only a few bars of light could be seen at the glass entrance, and those creeping out dimly from the very top of the glass walls that lined the front.

Maza put up a hand and stopped his partner as they reached one of the doors above the terraced entrance, something odd catching his eye in the moonlight. A dark streak trailed away from each pair of glass doors a few inches onto the sidewalk, lined up precisely with the cracks between them. He knelt down and ran his finger through the nearest one and then, on impulse, into the corner formed by the bottom of the door and the concrete of the ground. It came away stained with a tacky black substance; he sniffed it cautiously. A unearthly shiver shook Officer Maza, a cold lump suddenly swelled in his gut. Fighting to seem calm in case they were being watched, he shook his head as if he'd found nothing and stood up with a shrug that belied the intensity of his fear as he looked at his partner. "The windows have been sprayed over. We found it, Partner. Something bad's going on here."

Corbin felt the same thrill of excitement and fear, feigning a shrug and backing steadily away from the doors, activating the silent arm on his radio as he dropped his hands to his sides. The GPS inside the unit activated, sending out a signal that could be traced within three feet. That he and his partner had been able to so quickly locate the source of the trouble was the last thought he had before recalling the faces of his young wife and his parents, apologizing in his mind for what they were about to go through as the bullets tore through his body. Four hundred feet above him, the reversed flag still snapped in the cold breeze that descended to swiftly steal the once living warmth of the men who lay on the terraced concrete.

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Emilia Stafford erupted through the door of Curtis Manning's office without any preamble, her small face flushed as she gripped the frosted glass and took a quick breath. "Sir, we have something. LAPD is reporting an emergency silent alarm coming from within our targeted search perimeter. They needed some time to isolate it but it's coming from a hotel there, a new one, the Cerulean Cove. I put an alert out into the system for more information… and… and…," she folded her arms tightly. "We have a very big problem."

Manning came to his feet, herding her ahead of him down the metal stairs. "Go on."

"There's a high-level meeting there tonight, what was supposed to be their first formal function announcing themselves to the Washington crowd. We weren't notified because Division decided they were going to handle monitoring and security themselves along with the Secret Service. CTU was classified redundant to the need-to-know protocols."

"You mean we lost a pissing contest we didn't know was going on because there are agencies out there still annoyed we were the ones who brought down President Logan." He stood close behind her when they reached her station, Chloe's when she was off shift. She sat down and pulled up a satellite feed of the hotel and its scarcely occupied outer parking lots, then handed him a sheet of paper. "This is the guest list of a budgeting function for the Intelligence Appropriations Committee. There are six senators inside there, and the Speaker of the House, and there was a last minute addition to the guest list, Martha Logan."

Curtis sighed through a tight scowl and dropped his hands to his hips, crushing the paper slightly. "All right, we need to get teams down there and a cordon set up and if they want a pissing contest, we'll give them one. We got the call, now do we know why the hell it come on a CTU frequency?"

"The rest of the guest list would explain that, Sir. We already have three people inside, Mr. Buchanan, Chloe, and Jack Bauer. One of them must have gotten the signal out."

A half smile slashed Manning's broad face for a split-second after she spoke. "Damn, okay, good work. Let's start get--."

The phone interrupted his issuing of the orders and he pulled it off his hip when he heard the familiar ringtone. "Cassie, before you start, we have the location. LAPD came through."

Cassandra Gibson glanced up at the phone clipped to the visor of the black and white. "Yeah, more than you think. Ten minutes ago I ordered the nearest unit to do a drive-by and take a look. The officers who sent the signal are down, but I told the rescue units to hold off until I talked to you. So, you tell me; how soon can I get them out of there?"

"Stand by." Curtis sighed quickly and pointed at the screen on Stafford's right. "It's been long enough. Change that to infrared." She did so and sat back, tightening the view on the two figures now highlighted on the screen, side-by-side, figures already too dim for hope. "Cassie, I'm looking at an infrared. It's… it's not what… it should be. Your people are probably dead." Curtis listened to the silence on the other end of the line with empathy, but only for a few seconds. "Cassie, there's something el--."

Gibson cut him off with a mimic of his angry sigh from a moment ago. "Hold on." She spun the cruiser right into a small parking lot and slammed on the brakes, fighting a battle with her temper, a battle to stay in the moment. "What else?"

"There are several high level political figures in the Cerulean Cove. We can only guess they've been taken hostage and for whatever reason the hostiles have not made themselves known yet."

"Who's in there?"

"Six Senators and the Speaker of the House and Martha Logan as far—".

"Oh God, if we don't get Logan out of there Chloe and Jack are gonna' have our ass--."

"Cassie, shut up. That's not everything."

Gibson slammed her eyes shut and sat back, half expecting to hear what came next. "Your sister, Jack, and Bill Buchanan are in there, too. They were on the guest list; we just found out. One of them, Chloe probably, got the wireless signal out." Several seconds passed wherein he heard nothing, not even breaths. "Cassie?" Her tone of voice when she spoke again caught him off-guard; it was as if he'd added nothing more.

"I'll order and LAPD Mobile Command Unit to take a position between the hotel and LAX. They know we're onto them, but we still need to make our main assembly point outside their visual range. We'll set up a cordon and get the area clear for CTU to opera--."

"Cassie, damn it! That's your sis-."

"Curtis, do you want me or not?"

Curtis Manning glared up at the ceiling, the sheer calm of her tone making him shiver. Not wanting to follow one hidden pissing contest up with a completely open one, he took a moment to calm down himself. There were two other LAPD/CTU liaisons he could call for and put on standby, all the while knowing it would likely not be necessary. Gibson's stream of chatter had been intended, consciously or unconsciously, to prove to him that her tactical thinking was very much unaffected. He also might have two other liaisons to call, but neither of them knew CTU from the perspective of its staff anywhere near as well. Telling himself he would keep them ready at a moment's notice, he finally answered the impatient silence on the other end of the comm. "Go, damn it," he answered, apparently no longer caring who was listening. "What's your E.T.A.?"

"Fifteen minutes. What about the rest?"

"Go with it. I'll be getting tactical teams on stand-by. We'll combine our sniper units and position them in the surrounding buildings. Minus Buchanan I'm going to have to try to negotiate this thing. "

"You haven't heard anything from inside?"

"Beyond the signal that was most likely from Chloe, no. If they have demands - they're not ready to present them yet. They've got their own reasons for waiting. If they were just planning to kill everyone inside they could have done that and been gone already. I want to be ready for them when they do move, though, so get started."

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"You could stop this."

Buchanan granted Nirmala Hassal a grudging respect. He had been informed one of his guards was dead and there was at least one free agent moving about the Cerulean Cove, someone who had escaped capture, someone able to subdue one of his men, someone clever and agile enough to use the elevator shaft to avoid detection. … and for all that, he still looked calm and controlled, and most unnervingly, patient. He wasn't unbalanced or obsessive enough to expect everything to go perfectly. The CTU Director looked angrily at the man they had separated from the rest, a stocky, dark-haired and bearded budget consultant to Senator Anderson Dobbs. He was on his knees, hands clasped over his head against the curved, glass wall, equidistant between the isolated men and women who hours ago had been guests at a political soiree' but were now hostages to some unknown cause, along with 2 million unaware souls on the far side of their country.

"Tell me who is loose in the building and I'll let him live. I have time here yet. He doesn't, unless you give it to him. Who escaped and how many?"

The man on his knees before the massive guard sensed he was the object of their conversation and tore his eyes away from the threat. "Don't tell them any--."

His words ended with the sound of a crack, the giant's open hand catching the side of his head. Nirmala turned at the sound, his only expression a considering pout. "Well, now that you've started, finish. There are plenty of others if Mr. Buchanan is choosing to let us kill them instead of--."

"Damn it, Hassal! This is insanity!" Buchanan interrupted, his voice quiet but direct, some of his bravura fading. "Tell us what you want. Give us somewhere to get started. You can't achieve what you want like this and you're not a stupid man; you know that." He decided to give in enough to get them to stop. The only thing the were asking was how many and who. The only advantage they would have out of it was to be aware that they were facing someone skillful and resourceful and that they'd already pieced together Jack and Chloe's escape and the fact that they had remained undetected this long. His voice returned to its normal tone when he continued, slightly louder in fact, so that the huge man poised to strike the budget consultant yet again would hear him as well. "The man you're looking for is from CTU, he's one of our instructors, Jack Bauer."

"And what does this man teach?" Hassal replied, no change in his expression.

"Field protocol."

"And did he come to this event alone?" Hassal glanced over at the assembled group of women, some of them now sitting on the dark blue carpet that surrounded the outer edge of the circular room.

"As far as I know, yes."

"Very well, but just so you recall what not answering me when I ask for information costs…," Hassal turned, lifting his hand and snapping his fingers twice. In response, the man who had already struck the bearded budget consultant once, struck him again, then hauled him upright by his bloodstained shirtfront– easily even despite his bulk. Using his grip on the fabric he slammed the man against the wall, then threw him to the ground. The bulky man lay still for a moment, then rolled onto his side, spitting blood. The only sound in the room was his labored breaths and then the rustle of fabric and a choked scream as the huge, dark-skinned man used a grip on his suit coat to pick him up from behind.

Certain that the next set of injuries would be fatal Buchanan stepped forward slightly. "You've made your point. You're in control. What now? What more do you want?"

Hassal turned toward him, snapping his fingers twice again. The giant released the beaten man's coat and let him drop to the ground with a grunt. "For now, I have what I want. When I have something else I want, from someone else, I will come to you. For now, all I requi--."

"Commander, please come here!"

The voice was anonymous, one of the men across the way, standing next to one of the huge windows had called for him, one in a group of men wearing desert camouflage. No one told him to "Come" anywhere - so something significant must have demanded the attention of the men who were now waiting for him. He threw a half-smile at Buchanan in an impossible joke of an attempt to create simpatico with another leader. "It is hard to find good help these days. Excuse me."

Nirmala Hassal crossed the room with slow strides, making the point that he was coming of his own volition and at his own pace, and not giving in to the alarm of his man. He even offered what might have been a charming smile under other circumstances to the huddled and seated women as he passed them, as if he weren't observing them over the barrels of six automatic rifles still casually aimed in their direction. He stopped in front of the short man who had called him, scowling out of sight of his hostages and dropping his voice. "What is it,… Fool?"

The man cringed, betraying by his reaction the anger and accusation in Hassal's quiet tone. "Look out the window. The traffic has stopped. There are emergency vehicle lights reflecting off the buildings toward the airport."

Hassal grimaced at the change in scenery several blocks off, growing more and more unhappy as a new set of reflections seemed to puncture the darkness every moment. "… and soon they will try to reach me and find out my demands. All right, they know we're here. Whoever escaped us must have gotten word out before I wanted it out. Keep watching and come to me if you have anything else you think deserves my being shouted at like a pack animal."

"Yes, Sir. I'm sorry."

Hassal sighed and walked away, composed again. He signaled for his enforcer to join him. They came together before the doors of the elevator in the side of the fiberglass volcano, the larger man sensing the change in mood of his leader as they stood quietly for a moment; he knew better than to speak first. Hassal looked up and frowned, his dark eyes gleaming with an anger he would control before he approached any of the others again, Buchanan in particular. "The officers we killed must have had time to reveal our location. Whoever is moving around in here has taken something away from me, Sukumal, something I wanted very badly, the element of surprise when I made my call to the authorities. Nothing to be done for my disappointment now but a bit of revenge, hmph."

"It will be whatever you say, Sir. Should I take a few more men and begin searching myself?"

"Bauer is trapped. He'll reveal himself eventually but I can't let him interfere any more. You look for him alone. Start with the lower levels. He's gotten a signal out of here; the next thing he'll try is to get out is himself so he can report whatever he's seen."

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Full night had fallen and in its grip, the world consisted of two colors: glaring, brilliant flashes of red and blue that easily overcame the static glow of headlights. The flares splashed manically on every surface, reflecting painfully, dotting each intersection. In the cluster of tall buildings he could see only three cross streets but each of those was cluttered with police vehicles, their doors open, and the sound of bullhorns and engines growling as they stood at a standstill.

Curtis Manning blinked several times as he dropped out of the passenger seat of the SUV and let his eyes slowly adjust to the onslaught of flashing lights. Soon he was able to detect the smaller details and make order of the chaos. There were at least twenty police units. As he watched, another vehicle, a much larger one, pulled into the intersection he was in from the direction of West Century Boulevard. It was the size of a travel trailer, dotted the satellite dishes, floodlights, antennas and two megaphones pointing out to each side on the front. The Mobile Command Unit stopped just inside the cover of the building before him; the headlights switching off but the indicator lights on some of the external equipment activating to replace them in miniature.

The thumping tempo of helicopter rotors exploded against Manning's eardrums ten seconds later. He looked up as it flashed between the buildings, moving too fast for him to see even the color. He reached up to the field comm in his ear. "Emilia."

"Yes, Mr. Manning?"

"Call the FAA, tell them to put a civilian flight moratorium over a three mile area out from the Cerulean Cove. I don't want the media in here yet. We've already got helicopters in the air here from CTU. The LAPD might have them up, too."

"Yes, Sir. "

"Has anything else come in?"

"No, just the same signal repeating. Whatever Agent O'Brian did, they haven't found it yet. The Counter Terrorism Unit at LAX has forwarded over the passenger lists of the Senator's flights. The Speaker came by private charter, so did Martha Logan. We've ordered the pilots and the crewpersons taken in for questioning. The same for the drivers who took them to the Cerulean Cove. We've got the everyone's aides being interrogated and/or compiling lists of all the contacts they've had regarding this event."

"Good work. I'll be in touch. Call me if you come up with anything else."

The second CTU vehicle pulled in behind him, a black panel van out of which exited seven men in assault gear brandishing sniper rifles. Six fire trucks pulled into the intersection to the north, leading no less than ten ambulances, all of them standing down on the sirens and lights as soon as they came to a stop. They were there as a contingency, as were the chemical response teams that followed. They all remained where they were for a few moments, out on the wide north/south boulevard, chattering amongst themselves on radios and cell phones. Almost as suddenly as they arrived, they departed, spreading out to agreed upon cover out of line of sight of the Cerulean Cove behind the other structures.

Another block back, armed with cameras and lights and pressing as close as they dared between the two buildings were the media trucks, so easily and quickly dispatched in any major city but in L.A. somehow more easily still. Overhead the KTLA chopper was swooping down and backing off. There was no chance the FAA had called the alert yet but the pilot was probably accustomed to what the perimeters would be and was hovering where he could test them. Here they were showing some discretion because they knew they were near the center of operations, on the other barricaded streets, the news teams from the networks and the local stations were bound to be as determined to get the story as the police were to hold them back.

Two more CTU personnel units pulled in to the south, one of them their own, much smaller, Mobile Command Unit. Manning headed toward it, tuning out the blur of noise now increasing in intensity around him as the emergency vehicles and first responders assembled and dispersed themselves as needed, gearing themselves up to be here for God knew now long, most of them only aware that they had been ordered to set up a perimeter because of a hostage situation but not who was being held. He was ten steps away from the CTU command unit when he caught sight of a familiar figure moving toward the CTU vehicle from the east, only a silhouette in the blur of red and blue, moving, head down, with long, athletic strides as close to cover of the building as possible. Manning stopped and cupped his hands around his mouth. "Cassie!"

The blond woman came to a brief halt and raised a hand toward him, her index finger raised. When she turned he could only see that she was shouting into a police radio as she resumed moving. When she reached the cross street he had come down she glanced up at the Cerulean Cove quickly and then darted across to him. She was wearing, perhaps in an unconscious echo of her fellow officers, a black shirt and trousers and a crisp tan blazer; her sandy hair was pulled back in a ponytail. "… just tell him whatever his delivery is it'll just have to--. What? A hum-- a human heart!?"

Curtis felt his own eyebrows go up at that and held his questions as she listened for a few moments longer.

"You don't need me for this, Avery; you need another human organ, a brain. Don't just let him through, since you've held him up escort him into LAX and tell them it's got permission to go. Gibson out." The detective dropped the radio back into its holster, shaking her head slightly before looking up at the black man a few feet away from her, a half smile somehow on his face.

"Murphy's Law of roadblocks?"

"I wasn't about to let some other woman become a heartless bitch; that's my job." She sighed quickly. "You first."

"If I know it, you know it. CTU has nothing new but we've got Washington combing for intel and the head of Homeland has given us command even over Division since they know we have people inside who might be free agents. They'd be using our protocols if there's any way to get anything from inside. Division's pissed but we're the big fish now."

"Okay, so the LAPD works through me and all of it goes through you. That's better than I expected. My turn?"

"I got nothing else."

"Okay, we've got this place set up as a command center; we're evacuating ten blocks out and cutting off traffic back to LAX. If we need a fall back, we take it to the parking lot of The Dorchester Towers. It's three blocks west, two east, and we've got teams there clearing it. The only we can't do is stop the 405 since it's an evacuation route. LAPD has four choppers up and a mobile command unit on the way."

"Unless you mean a second one, it's here."

"Okay, good. What's next?"

"We're scoping the building from every angle, seeing if there's a vulnerability and then we'll see if we can find a way to communicate with whoever's in charge in there."

"Don't hang it all on the gizmos. The blueprints should be on file at the zoning office."

"Good thinking and see if we can track down the firms that did the construction. Since the owners planned to be hosting government officials they had to turn in specs on the security system and a floor plan. Of course, they could have paid off the inspectors, too." He paused, looking down at her with a half smile suddenly overtaking his face without his consent. It turned into a frown a moment later and he reached out to turn her chin. "What happened to you?"

Gibson reached up, catching his fingers and, after a glance to see who wasn't watching, kissed the backs of them before letting him go. "Nothing. It's road dirt. Rick and I finally got cause on a kid running the neighborhood happy shack. He's young; might've been early enough to clean him up. Who knows?"

Curtis shook his head slowly, his eyes still taking in the escalating scene around him as the police units and individual officers began to spread out and start the process of evacuating the structures in direct line of sight with the Cerulean Cover. There were a manageable four in its immediate vicinity and already, through the gaps in the architecture, he could see streams of civilians on foot beginning to be herded past. Westbound school buses were now headed past them also, filled with sleepy and confused and scared tourists and evening shift workers being taken to the staging area at LAX for coffee, questioning and artful explanations.

Chloe's sister watched it all with a sense of forced detachment Manning could feel. They'd been seeing each other for almost a year now, not long after Jack had been rescued from the Shanghai and recuperated in spirit and mind more than body under Chloe's care; she had been the one person for whom his mind had still had any sense of absolute trust after being freed from nearly a month of daily torture. His recovery had led them into their current relationship and to Curtis meeting Gibson. He'd sworn off relationships on the job but she was with the LAPD, a vice detective by night and the department's liaison with CTU as needed. Manning caught her eyes again, allowing himself one more half smile. "We can do this."

Gibson's lips thinned for a moment. "You can do this. I'm treading water and it would be easier if either of us didn't know a soul up there." She shook off the mood about to overtake them both. "Where are your snipers assembling? We need to combine the teams and then set up perimeter entry checkpoints and codes."

Manning fought back a smile as her priorities belied her own words. "Tactical will have that for us in about fifteen minutes. Oh, and your people are cleared for deadly force if anyone tries to go through the cordon."

Gibson's face twitched in a ghostly impersonation of her sister's usual expressive reaction. "All right, I assume you're extending temporary federal jurisdiction?"

"I didn't have time before I got here, but yes. About the snipers, we can't cover the penthouse but we can cover the event floor where we assume they're being held."

Gibson nodded and felt the wall come down between them, the shadow of death and mayhem that crouched in the corners inside and out. "I'm going to the MCU and see how the roadblocks are going. We'll take the four narrowest streets coming in here from each direction and set them up as checkpoints, Able, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta starting from the north. I'll check in in fifteen minutes or sooner if something changes." She offered Manning a last half smile of her own and turned, jogging across the open street and slowing to a walk once she'd reached cover. She held a position of authority here; she couldn't afford to be seen rushing about when it wasn't called for, some of the faces she was seeing suddenly seemed half her age. When the hell had that happened?

"Detective Gibson!" The woman came to a dead stop and spun toward the young dark-haired patrol officer running in her direction. "There's a man out here to see you. He won't come out of his car and he won't tell us who he is. They let him in at the roadblock when he said he had information about the Cerulean Cove. We haven't told the media anything yet about what's going on so we escorted him through but he won't tell us anything else, and he's wearing a hood. He won't talk to anyone but you."

Gibson shrugged. "It's probably one of my snitches who moved uptown. Some of them found out I'm a Fed somehow… but that's why they're snitches. Where is he?"

"This way, Ma'am."

"It's Detective, okay?"

"Yes, Ma--. Detective."

The car was just outside the cordon, an midsize sedan she couldn't tell the color of between the darkness and the tumble of red and blue lights still blindingly coloring the night in every direction. Gibson pulled out her service weapon and pointed it at the driver's side before she came out from around the corner, two uniformed officers the other one had flagged into the area doing the same. "This is Detective Gibson. Step out of the car. Hands where I can see them!"

The car door opened and from it stepped a man of middling height and medium build in what looked to be oddly well-tailored tan slacks and well-polished shoes beneath a long, dark gray, hooded jacket. The hood was still pulled up, however, concealing his face, muffling his voice as raised his hands. "Just Gibson."

"Do I know you?"

The figure remained still for a moment and then reached slowly for the top of the hood. "Just Gibson," he repeated, his voice intentionally muffled but clear enough. He stood still for a moment and then dropped down to his knees in the street, changing his plans and slowly unzipping the jacket, spreading it open to reveal he had nothing on beneath it but a simple and oddly out of place, fully-buttoned, white dress shirt. Gibson dropped her aim slightly to track him and glanced back over her shoulder.

"Go ahead, guys."

"We'll stay in earshot, Ma-- Detective."

"Thanks." She listened to them retreat without taking her eyes off the man before her. "Okay, Loverboy, it's just you and me." Over the sight of the pistol she watched as he reached a short-fingered hand up to his head and slowly pulled back the hood and raised his head. Gibson felt the usual knot in her gut turn into a puddle of acid. The man came to his feet slowly, as if he were unsure she might not still shoot him, the hands that had been raised waving in the air before him in a slow, placating manner.

"I… I came here to help. You gotta' believe me."

Gibson glared at him. "Why change my life now? By help you mean you were already here and you're just assuring me you're leaving, right?"

"I need thirty seconds and if you still want me gone, I'll go. Don't give me those thirty seconds and you might just end up kissing your ass and your precious badge goodbye. I'm here for Chloe, not you, and… because I… I might be… responsible for some of this, in total, total ignorance, of course. If I help you, I get immunity and you don't say a word where you're getting the information. You can get rid of the gun. I know you're not gonna' shoot me."

Gibson sat down on the hood of the sedan, looking up at the man before her with impatience and disgust. "You're right, I'd rather wring your neck… but just so you know, I'm under federal permission to use lethal force at my discretion." Gibson dropped her aim and returned the gun to its holster, then looked back and waved off the uniformed men well behind her. She turned back with a scowl. "Why am I not surprised you might be wrapped up in this? Had to be more than a few fast bucks in it somewhere."

"Because thinking the worst of me is the only thing you do better than putting your size nine foot up my ass."

"Do you still have the bruises or is that just a professional guess, Mr. Bundy?" She hissed, then leaned back. "So, let's have it; you got thirty seconds and if I'm not convinced you've cancered yourself up on conscience or if this isn't worth it, I'm taking you in myself for obstructing justice by wasting my time. So, just what the hell are you doing here, Morris?"


	6. Chapter 6

Hassal felt it without turning, the eyes of the prideful blond woman on her knees in the middle of the room

Hassal felt it without turning, the eyes of the prideful blond woman on her knees in the middle of the room. With a sigh he looked away from the mounting police presence in the streets far below them and met the gaze of the former First Lady. She met his gaze without flinching, her beaded white gown glimmering with fresh red blood in the center of the dark splotches that had already dried brown. Senator Freeman had lost consciousness an hour ago, breath barely moved her slender frame, but her heart still was beating. A few fresh drops of blood spattered the ground every few moments from the wound in her side. Hassal approached the woman kneeling next to her with a smile crawling over his face. It revolted her as intended and she withdrew from him when he spoke, a low whisper she could just barely hear. "You have been stabbing me in the back with your eyes for a long time now. It makes me wonder if you would do it with a knife."

Martha Logan looked away from the dark eyes trying to menace her, feigning fear that was greater than she was feeling. "What I would do to you isn't on my mind. This woman is possibly dying. She is a United States Senator. As much trouble as you're in already, if you let her die you'll have ten times more. You already have me as a hostage and didn't expect it. Take her downstairs, leave her by the door, and let someone take her to a hospital. You'll lose nothing."

Nirmala took a slow breath, a genuine moment of indecision on his face. He did need time. In all likelihood Bauer had somehow gotten word out that they were here before he wanted it known, giving the police and the government agencies more time to mount some sort of undermining of his operation, forcing him into the failsafe, perhaps too soon. Even if the mission failed, the deaths of so many Americans would be a retaliation on a scale with the losses his people had suffered. At least there would be that. He would lose nothing by letting the woman go. It would also draw them into a false sense of hope and of flexibility. One saved woman in the midst of what he was accomplishing was not a great sacrifice. The smile that had given Logan a knot in her stomach vanished beneath a business-like façade. He stood back from her and, this time, spoke in a normal tone.

"You are a smart woman. I have been here long enough to know that there can be smart women, women who deserve to be heard and make deals. Very well, I'll let her live."

Unsure if he would be worth his word, Logan gave him no signal of relief or overwhelmed gratitude, merely nodded and kept it business-like since that was what seemed to impress him. "Thank you. I'll get these bandages tighter and your men can see about moving her."

Bill Buchanan listened to the quiet exchange with a powerful mix of admiration and fear for Martha Logan. These were likely men who wouldn't tolerate her assertiveness again; even if she understood that, her own force of will might lead her to act against her better instincts if someone else were endangered and she thought she could be of help. For now, he would just have to be thankful for small favors, something he kept in mind as Hassal closed on him with slow steps.

"You see, I'm a reasonable man. I just have a goal that I am waiting to accomplish. I need you to be a reasonable man, also. Can I ask you to arrange for the Senator to be taken away?"

Buchanan glanced at the Congressional officers around him, none of who seemed to object to his being in charge of this particular situation. The look he'd given them even Buchanan knew was superficial. He was already sure they not only didn't object but probably preferred it. None of them were likely to have had his training for dealing with someone like Hassal. "I can do that."

"I assumed as much. Mr. Bauer doubtless let the authorities know we are here, so CTU will be the agency waiting for further contact. It only makes sense that they hear from you, hmph?"

Buchanan merely nodded and looked down at the radio on Hassal's belt. "Is that how you want me to reach him?"

"Him?"

"Curtis Manning. He'll be in charge of the operation out there most likely. He was the special agent in charge of CTU this evening."

"Very well. A moment… please." Hassal turned away, walking out into the hallway beyond the doors in the base of the volcano and then coming back, extending the small radio in Buchanan's direction. "We will move the Senator to the lobby. Fifteen minutes from now, your people can send in two EMTs to retrieve her. They are allowed only a gurney, no equipment. That's it. No more talking. Call your Mr. Manning. You may tell him that when the time is right I will call him with the rest of our demands. You are to share none of what I told you."

Buchanan nodded, then hesitated, pointing at the budgetary advisor the huge man had battered to serve as an example. "That man is injured also. You have nothing to gain by holding him."

Hassal sighed and quickly, a bored and dangerous expression returning to his narrow face. "No more talking or I'll have him killed now."

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Marcus Griffin came close to whiplash for the second time in a day as he sat at controls of the communications center of the CTU Mobile Command Unit and stared wide-eyed at the digital readout of the incoming call and heard the voice on the other end of the line. "Yes, Sir, Mr. Buchanan, right away." He toggled the mute button and looked down the tight confines of the vehicle. "Mr. Manning, I have Bill Buchanan. They've unblocked the communications scrambling on the building."

Curtis Manning took the headset from him quickly but without snatching it. "See if you can detect any other signal." He turned away before Griffin even acknowledged him and took a breath before slipping the headset on. "Bill, what's going on?"

"I don't have time to tell you. The people who have taken the Cerulean Cove will call you to let you know what they want but we have another concern right now. Senator Freeman has been shot. They've agreed to take her down to the lobby and release her, but your EMTs can only bring in a gurney and transport her out. They want her picked up in 15 minutes. Are you set up to do that?"

"Of course. Bill,…?"

"That's all we can do for now Curtis. These people will be in touch when they're ready."

"We'll be there." Manning sighed as the disconnection happened and looked down at the dark-headed Griffin. "Nothing else?"

"No, and they've scrambled everything again. I'm sorry."

"We'll find a way in. Don't worry. Whatever's going on there Buchanan didn't even take the chance of passing along anything coded. Call whoever you need." Curtis gave the last order and backed out of the van, headed toward the ambulance crew two hundred feet away and unhappy with what he was about to ask.

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Morris O'Brian was a man who preferred things simple unless it was technology. Trying to get past the intractable mindset of his ex-sister-in-law was something he'd never managed, not with charm, not with apologies, not with gifts, not with his sincere prior efforts to prove to her that he'd loved her sister. She was simple in one way, in terms of her anger toward him, but now it complicated matters considerably; he was doing the right thing as he saw it and she still wasn't listening. Visibly tense on the side where her eyes were boring into him in the darkness, he called up the buried file and entered a password. Behind him, unbelievably - she was actually counting, just under her breath, actually – literally - giving him thirty seconds to change her mind.

The wire-diagram came up when she reached twenty-seven and he stood back from the laptop on the hood of the car. "There. I saved a copy of the real ones. The minute I heard the police scanner tell all units to report down here and block everything off, I finally listened to that gut feeling that was telling me something was wrong with those blokes."

Gibson merely took another chance to offer him a glare as she leaned past him and looked at the spindly cylindrical figure on the screen, complete with marked stairways, elevator shafts, doorways and measurements. Morris leaned in as if he were afraid she'd snap his fingers off. "You just hit the "Next Screen" but--."

"I got it."

Morris sighed, taking consolation in the slow shock making its way across the sharply set lines of Cassandra Gibson's face, made more stark by the filtered flashes of red and blue. There were now dozens of emergency vehicles in sight and dozens more holding off traffic that they couldn't see. Lights were going off in the windows around them and the night was deepening as the businesses and residences nearest the besieged hotel were emptied; the ever present glare and swirl of traffic was already gone, the closer buildings nearly evacuated. The lights at each intersection signaled as programmed with no one to tell to stop or go.

Gibson reached the last page of the electronic blueprints. They had been labeled simply enough as she tabbed through them, Floor Plan A, Floor Plan B, Floor Plan C, Floor Plan D, depending up on the size of the rooms that occupied each floor and whether or not they held exercise facilities, service kitchens, a common area, a meeting room, or suites. The penthouse was different, of course, as was the basement and the three bottom levels where the lower function rooms, the pools, the offices, and the parking facilities were located.

It was the last page that made her hackles rise, a full-length diagram of the building with four unlabeled "Xs" on it, one on the conference floor where they assumed the hostages were, two near the top two floors and another at the very base of the building, in the parking garage and a service entrance of some sort.

Gibson took a moment to let the shock on her face, the shock slacking her jaw and narrowing her eyes, give way to suspicion before she let her former brother-in-law see more than her profile. "What the hell is going on here?"

"I can only tell you what I was told but I don't believe it… now. That's why I came down here, one of the reasons. I mean, if you were going to build something as fancy as all that, before you had any guests in there, especially from the government, I'd've had the seismic sensors in there as soon as the structure was ready for them. That's what they told me those last four marks were. The ones up top were supposed to detect the degree the building was swaying compared to the one in the middle, and the one at the bottom how much to have the compensation system work. All very scientific. Didn't really understand much beyond that. I'm not at architect, just a hacker and a fancy electrician."

Gibson bit her tongue over the few dozen unflattering things that she would have added to the list. Now wasn't the time. "So what were you doing for the people that built this thing?"

"That's the part you'll be glad to hear, Darlin'. I got approached… quietly… about a year ago by a couple of people who needed some work done in a sort of low-key situa--."

"Low-key? …on a building in the middle of L.A. the size an aircraft carrier on its nose?!"

"Look, do you want this information or --?"

"I already have enough to take you in about six times right now, Morris! … and you're telling me none of this made you think something was going on that was sleazy even by your standards?"

"I'm going to ignore that on account of you're upset. It's unbecoming of you professionally, you know. I just came down here to give you some information."

The detective reasserted itself and leashed the tongue of the protective sister. "All right, you're here. I'm shutting up. I just have one question How did you know Chloe was in there?"

Gibson felt the first moment of honest sympathy for her ex-brother-in-law that she'd felt in years when his head snapped up and she saw the alarm registering on his face. "I didn't. I swear to you; I did not. No way. I came down here to tell you what I could. I knew you'd gotten in with CTU. Even if you were pissed when you told her, I figured you'd let Chloe know I tried to do… something. Why the hell is she in there?"

"I can't tell you that, not now." Gibson glanced up at the Cerulean Cove and then back at the Mobile Command Unit, leashing the jumble of thoughts struggling to dominate her priorities. "All right, why were they asking you so… quietly… to work for them?"

Morris sensed the change in her tone with bitter relief. "I still want immunity. Chloe being in there doesn't change what I was going to offer you."

"I can handle that for the police but not the Feds. If my sister does still mean anything to you, you take your chances. All I can offer is to talk to Curtis."

Indecision hung on the programmer's face for a moment and then gave way with visible reluctance and a snarl of irony: Gibson might do anything else to him, but, of course – bottom line, she was a Gibson, she wouldn't lie. Thinking that'd be an advantage in a wife just hadn't turned out as well as he'd planned. He'd forgotten the fact that marrying Chloe meant marrying the rest of them. "They were having a bit of cash flow trouble. If I did the work now for half the rate, I'd get a cut sent to an account as soon as they started showing a profit, a perpetual income in the future if I brought them in under budget now."

"Don't tell me… private account, no number, one you even helped them set up. Just fair warning; do not shit me, Morris."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"Really? Well, since we don't keep in touch – I'm a detective now; I know how to follow the money. They were making sure they got you on permanent terms, you and your closed mouth. Maybe you were even told that if something ever happened, the money would somehow still keep coming unless…?" Gibson leveled a glare on him that, after a moment, drew more than a trace of guilt to his face. A cold, superior smile replaced her expression of impatient suspicion. "Now that we're clear about that, do you have anything else?" Gibson swung away from the computer and sat down on the hood again, eyes back in her head and not noticing as Morris O'Brian poised his finger over a single key on the laptop.

"The rest is they paid me last week and the next thing I hear is the police are all over this place… and when I checked my pending Swiss account tonight it had vanished. But, I swear to you… whatever I thought might happen when they offered me a future cut, it was nothing like this."

Gibson's gaze dropped then, the disgust in her voice blatant, "Fine. I will give you that much, but let me thank you for checking that before you came here. Gave you one more reason to turn on them."

"I didn't know Chloe was in there then, remember? And that's how I knew they were up to no good for certain."

"When… they… cheated… you. Of course. So, Shoe-Horny, you're not an architect, what the hell were you doing?"

The enjoyment he might have gotten out of the next thing he was about to offer up was dampened by the fact that he now knew that Chloe was likely a hostage along with whomever else was in the Cerulean Cove but he managed to enjoy a frail moment of superiority nonetheless. He smiled at the tall woman thinly and tapped the key, opening another file and enjoying the second look of shock that registered on her face in the last twenty minutes. "Best part, Darling, I set up the security system. I can get you in there."

What little enjoyment O'Brian managed to take from the slack, wide-eyed expression on his former relative's face was far more short-lived than he'd hoped. She moved too fast for him to do much about it, snapping up from the hood, one foot sweeping out and connecting with the back of his left leg at the same time as her right forearm slammed him across the shoulders. Her right fist balled into his clothing and spun him down to his knees. The left arm he had swung out to catch himself out of instinct was up behind his back before he hit the ground. Seconds later he felt the bite of the handcuff. Knowing the drill, sighing, he quickly offered his right hand behind himself. To his surprise she only urged him onto his feet and to the driver's side of the vehicle.

"Get in."

Unsure of where this was going but suddenly hopeful that it wasn't the 77th Precinct, Morris obeyed, opening the door and sliding behind the wheel, saying nothing as she glared at him and looped the cuffs through it before locking the open one around the right harm he revolunteered with a tight smile. "Keys!" He obeyed her a second time, handing them over and glaring upward.

"Believe it or not, I know this means you're not going to turn me in. You still need me to get into the last few files and you need me to access their security network. You use snitches all the time, Cass'. It's not like I'm asking you to toss those good cop principles out the window just for me."

"This'll sound familiar: Shut up, Morris! I don't need shoes; don't try to sell me anything, last of all what you think of me as cop. While I'm gone have yourself a Zen moment: focus on the spot where your computer used to be. Oh, and, by the way, if we don't stop them… and … get to the bottom of this, whoever's up there'll probably eventually try and kill you. So, there might be one good thing about it if this all goes wrong." She backed out of the vehicle with a smile he remembered with a chill, slamming the door of the rental car, and snatched the computer from the hood. She glanced at the screen once again and pulled out the radio on her belt as she stalked away and back toward brightly flashing chaos of a street wall-to-wall with police units and emergency vehicles. Morris let a tight smile escape him as his former sister-in-law stormed past the LAPD command unit and headed for the similar vehicle brought by CTU. God, he was probably still going to regret this.

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Against the odds, they had made their way downward, avoiding at least three patrols of dark-skinned and almost universally slender men to the ninth floor. They had exited the stairwell when the noises above them let them know they were sharing it and with more than the usual group of two men who moved about the building searching for himself and Chloe and possibly others who might have escaped their initial round-up. They had found two hotel security officers dead outside of one of satellite offices, possibly gunned down as they had exited it in response to the shouts of guests being rounded up. So far they'd not found one of the guests dead, but that would be only a matter of time.

Outside of the stairwell door on the ninth floor, Jack Bauer and Chloe O'Brian stood listening to the approaching footsteps from above. They were irregular and occasionally punctuated by commands in a language neither could identify. The hand-weapon he had taken off the guard they had killed held ready, Bauer eased up to glance through the small, wire-laced window as the sounds indicated that the party that had been in the stairwell were now beneath them. He drew back a moment later, frowning. "There were three of them, two of them were carrying an injured woman. That probably means they're talking, someone's cut a deal."

A quick smile flashed across O'Brian's face. "Which means CTU is out there. They got the signal. At least, maybe, we saved… one person."

Bauer offered her a quick smile. "It also means we have to stay put for a while. There's going to be activity on those lower floors and if they can get that woman out of here, we don't want to do anything to endanger her. I think it was Senator Freeman. Dark blue dress?"

"Yeah, that was her. She looked like a movie star, not a Sena--." The gunshot cut off the rest of her words, a shot that sounded once far down the dark corridor and then ricocheted off the metal door behind them and buried itself in the dark paneling. Jack was still attempting to aim the pistol with his right hand as he fell, blood streaming from the wound in his left arm and unable to catch himself as he fell back toward the now bullet-scraped door. The sound of his head striking it was nearly as loud as the initial shot had been. Chloe stood paralyzed for a moment and then dropped to the dark blue carpeting beside him, automatically retrieving the pistol from his hand. She swept the corridor in front of her, firing randomly, moving on her knees to position herself between Jack and the unseen gunman who had snuck up on them as Freeman had been moved past.

Whomever had fired the shot was concealed now, one of the hostage takers no doubt because he'd had a passkey back into one of the rooms when she'd returned fire. She thought about standing up, looking for him, what Jack would do, and what she knew she couldn't. She spent the next second wishing she had been shot instead. He could have gotten them out of this. She risked a glance back and saw that he was pale but he was breathing and doing so easily, then turned her attention forward. She did come to her feet then, placing herself squarely between Bauer's unconscious form and the direction of their attacker's shots, the gun aimed steadily. "I'm a federal agent, too, and… and I've shot somebody before!. Twice!" She scowled at herself. She not only sounded stupid, she still sounded terrified. Whoever was out there had probably killed somebody twice in the last fifteen minutes. Well, maybe her sounding terrified would lead them into a false sense of security. Even if terrified she might be that certainly wouldn't stop her from killing whoever was after them; their life meant nothing to her.

The minutes stretched out, filled with silence except for the sound of Jack Bauer's slowing breaths and the inevitable odd creak from a brand new building that would send chills down the analyst's spine and tremors into her hands. Eventually, the waiting itself was almost as taxing as the tension. "Where are you?" She yelled down the seemingly empty corridor, still knowing better than to try finding their assailant by actively searching for him and catching herself in a blind spot, unable to protect Bauer any longer. Whoever was fired had expected this to be easy, hadn't expected her to take the gun from Jack. He was a coward, waiting them out…. And without a computer, the best thing she could do was just guess his whereabouts.

Eyes still trained down the dark hallway, punctuated by almost sinister gleams of polished brass that reflected what little light there was, she backed up and knelt down, releasing one hand from her grip on the pistol long enough to touch Bauer's face. He was cooler than she wanted, but the glance also reminded her he was carrying at least two additional ammunition clips for the gun. Just for the hell of it, she fired four more rounds down the hallway, two to each side. Nothing. She was beginning to doubt that there was a gunman any longer, but not enough to go confirm for herself. Someone had fired on them; they weren't likely to leave just because she was armed as well. They were watching her, somewhere, waiting as she was but nowhere near as terrified. Her hand shaking, she reached down to Bauer again, a cold and practical part of her mind reassuring her that at least they might die together. Chloe glanced down again, stroking his still boyish face that had nevertheless seen so man horrors, that had drawn with the pain of both receiving and dispensing them, and yet still broadened with happiness when they were alone.

Chloe glanced over at the small pool of blood now on the floor beside him. The bullet wound seemed to be nothing but a deep graze, not to deep enough to have hit an artery but enough that he'd need it treated by someone other than herself, even so, she could do nothing now without letting go of the gun. She was more worried about the strike he'd taken to the head. The weapon still aimed down the hallway, she let her free hand wander back over his pale face and into his hair, trying to feel the lump she knew would be forming. Her fingers detected the hot edges of the inflammation and she grimaced, moving to turn his head and take the pressure of the area of the blow. She got no farther than the intent. The door behind them slammed open and a pair of arms closed around her that looked impossibly huge. The gun flew from her hand before she could even bend her arm to risk aiming it backwards. The man who had grabbed her threw against the wall hard enough the her next breaths were painful and black-edged as she slid to the ground. Chloe forced her eyes to focus as she came to her hands and knees and crawled forward, intent to do nothing more than throw herself over Jack. Let the bastard kill them together. Let them have at least that.

She got no more than a yard before he was back on her, yanking her up by her hair and bringing her to her feet. He was bald, dark-skinned and had a mustache, wearing a jungle camouflage uniform and easily close to three hundred pounds, none of it fat. He held her against the wall and after a moment, merely laughed. "Don't worry. You're too pretty to kill… right away. Maybe you'll make it worth my time and I let you save your little boyfriend's life?"

The words were nothing less than a knife, driven into her gut and up into her momentarily non-beating heart. She was shaking the moment they left his mouth, mixed with the bitter agony that if there was any chance the offer was true she might say "yes" not that he probably wasn't going to savage her anyway. If he did, she only hoped Jack was unconscious long enough not to see it. His dead wife's autopsy report had told him she'd been raped and that alone had nearly been enough to drive him mad, much less her murder at a traitor's hands. She'd find a way to kill herself first, for Bauer's sake as much as her own if she knew they were doomed regardless. The beast poked her again, just in the shoulder, his eyes traveling her rhinestone trimmed cleavage and her legs revealed by her shredded dress, laughing at the pantyhose still tied around her arm. "It's your lucky day, though. I have orders to bring Bauer back upstairs. Since I have to carry him you have a choice, I break his legs since he won't be needing them or you can come with me and not be any trouble."

Had his hand not been holding her to the wall still, O'Brian would have sagged with relief. Someone wanted them alive, or wanted Jack, at least for long enough for him to be taken back upstairs. She raised her hands slowly. "No problems. I promise. Just don't hurt him." She was giving this beast even more power than he already had and she knew it but right now, it didn't matter. If he wanted her to hear her submission to his threats so be it. He knew what power he had. He glanced at the gun she had lost with a calm smile. It was well within her reach where she now stood, not moving a muscle toward it as the giant bent down and captured Bauer's wrists in one meaty hand and lifted him over his left shoulder like a rag doll, hooking one arm around his waist. He fumbled at a pocket on his chest for a moment, pulling out a key and handing it to her. She took the unfamiliar piece of metal from him with a confused look. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

"It's the master key to the elevators. I'm not carrying your boyfriend up the stairs, Woman. Move head of me. Go."

Chloe did as she was told, taking one last glance at Bauer and seeing the abrupt movements had started up the blood flow from his gashed arm again. If she was going to be allowed to attend to him at all she should move quickly. She slid the key into the slot when they reached the elevator in the dark corridor, having to feel for the small gap in the metal of the control panel. She turned it and watched the sequence of lights run through a self-check but the doors opened immediately, explaining to her how their attacker had dropped down a floor and come up to attack them again via the stairwell. That eternity she had spent crouching beside Jack, the gun pointing at what she now knew had been an empty corridor, had been a matter of less than eight minutes. For whatever the realization was worth, at least she now knew Jack hadn't been bleeding for the half-hour that it had seemed as she knelt beside him, nor had he been unconscious anywhere near as long as she'd feared.

The doors of the elevator opened onto the same corridor they had passed through what seemed like an infinite number of hours ago and Chloe stepped out of the parted door, an amusing sight to the three armed men standing there. They turned glances on her that roiled her stomach but she glared back at them in the way that had earned her such a bitch reputation at CTU and was slightly happy to see the youngest of them look away. She glanced back at the man following her as they reached the doors back into the huge function room, Jack limp over one massive shoulder, blood dripping off his left fingers occasionally and now smeared on the huge man's uniform. He either hadn't noticed, didn't care, or was happy to have it there.

She reached out to open the door for him and stopped, turning slightly and extending her hand. "No tricks. Here's your key back. I didn't hope you'd forget and try to keep it or something, so when we get in there, can you at least put him down on one of the sofas, maybe let me stop the bleeding? I mean, you could at least do that; you shot him."

"And you're in a position to offer me nothing. Open the door. He is getting a little heavy. I maybe might drop him on his head again."

The last hope of finding a shred of humanity in their captor gone, Chloe turned and opened the door, walking past the two pairs of armed guards and immediately making eye contact with Bill Buchanan. He nodded at her tightly from where he now sat on the floor; he came to his feet when he saw the man entering behind her with Jack Bauer slung over his shoulder. His alarmed gaze dropped to Chloe again, this time fully registering her appearance but only briefly before he looked her in the eyes again and asked without words the question that he dreaded. The analyst shook her head minutely and with a weak smile; no, Jack wasn't dead. Not that the man carrying him wasn't half-trying again. He grabbed Bauer's wrists once more and let him slide off his shoulder as if he were a bag of rocks, a sardonic smile on his face as he did drop him onto a sofa but close enough to the glass tabletop held up by the sculpted parrot that his not striking his head on it as well was a near miracle. Chloe glared up at the behemoth with a sardonic smile of her own. "Thanks."

Ignoring the rest of the room, and especially the man closing on them slowly from the direction of the western facing windows, she dropped to her knees beside Bauer and tugged the pantyhose free of her arm, using them for a tourniquet and then tearing apart the rest of the sleeve over the wound. The bullet had ripped through the surface of his skin and left a gouge just over a half inch deep at the slope where his deltoid muscle tapered into his triceps or it otherwise might have been deeper.

"Chloe, look behind you on the floor. There are some rags I left when Senator Freeman was shot… for no reason."

Chloe looked up and bit her lip when she saw Martha Logan, her exquisite white dress smeared and streaked with dried blood. "Okay. Thanks. Are you all right?"

"It's the Senator's, Sweetie. Take care of Jack."

Nirmala Hassal stopped at the foot of the sofa on which Bauer had been dropped, watching as the small blond woman draped Bauer's bleeding arm over her shoulder and wrapped the strips of torn cloth over it, not once looking in his direction. She was pale but sweat gleamed on her face and bosom and she was biting her lower lip repeatedly as she worked and then sat back on her heels, folding Bauer's arm across his chest. She didn't move as the armed man knelt down beside her but risked a glance in his direction when he spoke. "What is your name?"

The small woman willed herself still, her flesh nevertheless crawling as his fingers drifted across her shoulders then her back. "O'Brian, Agent Chloe O'Brian."

"You work for CTU?"

"Yes."

"Are you afraid of me?"

Chloe turned then to look at him then, her face twitching slightly as she fought to keep an expression off of it that would radiate what she was really thinking, that she remembered how empty she'd been surprised to feel the times she had shot someone and how much less it would mean to her now. "I'm not stupid, Mr. Whoever You Are. It'd be stupid not to be afraid of you. You're in charge here. You could shoot me, or Jack, or tell one of your people to, and nobody can stop you."

"Then I could make you beg for your life… or his?" Hassal smiled when she looked up at him again, her eyes wide and tears brimming, her chin quivering. "He has caused me a lot of trouble, hmph? You were with him. So… so did you. You owe me that, I think, a little amusement while I wait."

"Hassal, that's enough."

The dark man stopped what he had started to do, reaching for O'Brian's face. Two long, gleaming trails of tears now marked it, tracked through her carefully applied make-up that was part of what had made she and Jack late aside from more pleasant things. Hassal looked from the kneeling woman and up to the tall man who had spoken. "So many more years of experience, Mr. Buchanan, and yet you know less than this beautiful young woman about who is in charge here. My "enough" and your "enough" are not be the same thing, no?"

Unintimidated, Buchanan pressed his hands to his hips and brought himself up to his full height. "You came here on your mission. For whatever's important to you, you're living up to it. You knew when you started into this night our mission would be to stop you but there are rules men of honor obey in a conflict. Bauer's no threat to you, not now, neither is that woman. Their part in this is over. You're too good a soldier to be getting much sense of accomplishment tormenting a scared woman, aren't you?"

Chloe remained frozen, not even allowing herself a sigh of relief as Hassal stood, and with a sick sense of gentility, offered the CTU director a slow and mocking bow. "No, I am not, not truly. She has too much courage to make it worthwhile. Even when her lips were about to beg there was courage and anger and hatred in her eyes. I'd won nothing; you are right. See then, I can be a reasonable man. Bauer was just doing his job and my men knew the risk when they came here, but I no longer believe that this man is a… protocol teacher. When he wakes up and I have time… I'll get the truth out of him and she can watch, then she'll actually be afraid."

Chloe sighed quietly to herself as Hassal finally walked away, offering Buchanan an amused smile as he walked past him and out through the doors in the giant fiberglass volcano. Hot and angry, two more tears slid from her eyes and she sat back on her heels, swiping at them before any more of the armed men in the room came to see if they could elicit more. She closed her eyes for a moment and leaned forward, crossing her arms on the edge of the sofa on which Bauer lay and resting her head on them.

The thoughts and questions tumbled through her mind like a landslide, wondering who these people were and what they wanted and if there was anything to do to undermine them and what the hell was going on outside and if they would be able to do anything from their end and a dozen more details of the situation she knew she could have had at her fingertips if there had been a functioning intel set up before her. If she'd been alone, she might have risked trying to get them to let her be in front of a computer. She could pretend that she was scared and offer to help them… and then take the risk of doing something that screwed up everything for them. But now… she wouldn't… couldn't. Jack was her responsibility. She had no willingness to play the heroine. If she got the opportunity to screw these assholes up somehow, she would, but her first concern was getting him out of here. The rest came after that. Her head was still down, her body still shaking, when she heard the sound that had awoken her so many times in the past few months, the shortening of Jack's breaths as he entered a REM cycle and no good was coming of it; nightmares were overtaking his mind as he lay before her.

Her touch came as soon as Bauer anticipated it and even under the circumstances he drew a small comfort from it. The pain in his head was relentless but manageable and the pain in his arm had faded to bearable; the blood loss was even hardly as bad as what he knew Chloe would believe but enough that he was noticing it. She leaned over him and rested her hand on top of his, whispering the trigger phrases that had so often broken his nightmares. Jack shortened his breathing more, letting it take on a frantic edge, knowing what she would do in response. The moment O'Brian's hand closed around his, Bauer returned her grip lightly, just enough to keep hold of her hand and drag it beneath one of the pillows next to him. Hidden from view, he squeezed her hand twice and hard and opened his eyes just enough to see the relief and the acknowledgment on her tear-streaked face. He was awake; he was conscious, but for now he only wanted her to know. If he never found a chance to take advantage of it beyond that, then at least he could give her the comfort of knowing that he hadn't sustained a serious injury when he struck his head.

Nirmala Hassal returned through the same door, his hand lifting up from his belt as he replaced his radio catching Buchanan's eyes. He was reporting to someone else. That had to be why he was leaving them to make his calls and the calls were able to be transmitted out when needed so the means of lifting the scrambling was nearby. All interesting facts except Buchanan had no way to act on them for now. He glanced over at Martha Logan and shook his head, catching her eye as she looked up from watching Chloe carefully tending to a still unconscious Jack Bauer, hunched over him protectively and continually glaring from side-to-side. Hassal ignored them, walking around the perimeter of the room slowly, occasionally acknowledging his men with a sudden and dark smile. He stopped before the western facing windows and glanced down at the swarms of red lights that could be seen gleaming out from behind the buildings where the police vehicles had assembled. They had chosen the spot to block his escape route, a pointless effort ultimately. He would have the ultimate escape and it had nothing to do with the uniformed men and (so strangely to him) women fourteen stories below them. That was the price and the plan all along.

Tiring of the drama outside, he nodded at his men and continued around, stopping again when he reached Bill Buchanan who had returned to his seat on the floor. "I have news for you. What I was waiting for is now ready. In a few moments, maybe with your help if I want, this will begin."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Kathirivan Bhakti glanced around in the darkness, so deep now he only saw the light from the computer screens and not the walls beyond them. Silhouettes moved before them, haloed like ghosts, managing the information, taking it through the steps they had rehearsed for years, hours upon end until the moves and even the thoughts were automatic, only now it was real. Lives hung in the balance, those to be saved… and those to be sacrificed, a few dozen certainly, a few hundred perhaps, and if the enemy had learned nothing… millions, a number that outmatched the lives already taken on the other side of the world.

On the screen before him, over the shoulder of Patel Amrish, a small spot on the radar screen pulsed green and pinged, reporting on one item in the range of the scan. Patel hands moved slowly and steadily, his eyes never leaving the glowing dot. "They will know we are tracking them, but not why. They will start calling the government shortly, demanding advice, answers."

Bhakti nodded, forgiving the implied suggestion that he move things along as eagerness for his plan to be executed. "They'll have them. Have our vessels stay in range of the U.S.S. Alexander. If they force contact, tell our commanders to tell the submarine that they will hear from their government shortly."

Patel nodded and brought the headset mouthpiece closer to his lips and began speaking as Bhakti stepped away, back further into the darkness, and retrieved his phone. He watched the time, and waited a minute past the time he knew the block would be lifted on the Cerulean Cove. He tabbed the phone and waited, taking a single breath before the call connected. "Nirmala?"

"I am here."

"Are your hostages under control?"

"We had… a brief problem. We released one hostage who was injured as a show of faith, to make them think we will talk."

"We will, up until the time they know our demands and that they have no options. Everything is ready at your end and you can be certain the others have done their part. You have made us proud. We are glad to have you as the part of the Hand of Freedom."

"… and honored to have you as its heart. When you stand before the people, they will know how fortunate they have been."

Kathirivan sighed, closed his eyes, and looked into to the darkness that was within him. "They will have fortune, Hassal. Do not worry. Now, I need a word with one of the Americans. You have their Speaker of the House?"

"Yes."

Nirmala Hassal looked up from the radio and out across the grossly decorated circular room, full of palm trees that were an ironic touch of home and garish colors and bright metals, all reflected darkly in the slightly curved panes of glass. He knew enough of their money to know the cost of the room would have fed his mother's village for a year, and the two nearest it. The man who he needed was again sitting on the floor, looking exhausted and angry and hopeless. "Mr. Speaker, I have someone here who would like to talk to you."

Dominguez looked up, his dark eyes narrowing. "Who is it?"

"The man who is going to finish what I've started. You want this over. Am I correct?" Hassal offered him the phone and after a glance at Bill Buchanan he took it, unconsciously straightening his tie.

"This is the American Speaker of the House Richard Dominguez. To whom am I speaking?"

"My name is unimportant. You may call me… we'll say Satesh. This situation is by my design, both in the Cerulean Cove and in New York, and Washington DC I assume by now - but not as much there, eh?"

Dominguez held back any sound, even a breath. "We know you want the nuclear missiles on the Navy Submarine. Whatever the cost, President Gardner does not --," Dominguez stopped talking, clearing his throat to cover the delay. Sitting cross-legged on the floor next to him, Bill Buchanan had reached under his leg and stabbed him sharply with his thumb. The CTU director was expressionless, from the timing of his jab, however, Dominguez knew what he was being told… don't tell him "no".

Bhakti entered smoothly into the break. "We have it within our capability to sink the submarine. While my country lacks the sophisticated recovery vessels that could retrieve the missiles, we have larger, more fiscally and technically able friends who do and who will be glad to take four of the missiles, full of your technology, as payment, leaving us with the rest. So, the option before you is lose the submarine and the missiles if you do not do as we ask and as well provoke an international war or you can talk to me, arrange a trade, save yourselves and perhaps a few million of your people. Think about it. When you are ready, you may tell Nirmala the number to reach your President and be "our" Speaker instead for a little while. I am not a man without a sense of humor, hmph?" As if to prove it… he offered a soft laugh at the other end of the line. The sibilant hiss was still in Dominguez's ears when the line went dead. Numbly, he offered the phone back to Hassal, and suddenly wondered why the hell he'd ever even run for student council forty years ago.

"The President will need time, Mr. Hassal. He's not going to agree to your demands no matter how well you've positioned yourselves, not without considering all of his options with the Joint Chiefs and his Cabinet."

Hassal sighed and shrugged, at ease with how they had positioned themselves. "I won't ask you now. I'll let you think about your sales pitch when you call him, hmph?" With that he turned on his right heel and left, headed back out the door in the base of the volcano at an unhurried speed, not glancing once in the direction of the blond woman who was kneeling over the unconscious man on the couch next to the glass topped tables, the man who had escaped him and cost him one of his men and, perhaps, the element of surprise when the President received the call. In retrospect, perhaps it was a good thing. Gardner had been up and worried, his nerves frayed just a bit already when the time came for him to be called. This false teacher, this Bauer, and his woman had perhaps done them a favor. Men were replaceable, unexpected favors not so much.

In the midst of the comforting nothings Chloe O'Brian was whispering in Jack Bauer's seemingly insensible ears, a few less comforting words entered the one-way conversation as she hovered and stroked his face. "The guy in charge left. He had the Speaker of the House talk to someone on the phone. I'm guessing it was whoever's really in charge." Jack turned toward her very slightly, his mouth twitching, and she leaned up as if to kiss him, his lips close enough to tickle her own was he answered, his voice less than a whisper.

"We need to get out of here. Once they get what they want or if they don't, we're all dead anyway."

"They let Senator Freeman go."

"That was a confidence bluff."

"Oh, okay. Right. Crap. I'll think of something. At least… at least you can sort of rest."

Jack opened his eyes to slits and saw the scowl on the small woman's face and strangely enough found it in himself to relax a little. He gently squeezed the hand still holding his own. She would find a way to get them out so they could deal with this from a position of strength and with information from the inside. Chloe fussed over him a moment more, faking the concern she was showing all too easily as she arranged the pillows around him and used the opportunity of her maneuvers to scan the crowded room and count the guards; there were few to spare. Good. Hassal returned just as she settled down on the floor next to Bauer again to slide her arm beneath his neck and grip his shoulder, her movement drawing his eyes to her this time. O'Brian met his gaze squarely and suddenly, her lips thinning with anger. She had one thing to offer to their leader… and one thing only.

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"In the car."

Manning glanced down the road ahead of them as he followed Gibson, noting the difference in her stride as she stalked toward the colorless sedan, its lights still on, parked in the middle of the road. There was someone in the car, wearing a dark fleece jacket and trying to look nonchalant about being handcuffed to a steering wheel. He was bald with a thin mustache and week's growth of goatee and eyes that even from this distance never seemed to stop moving as far as Manning could tell. Gibson was glaring at him as she stopped, put the laptop down on the hood of the car and opened it. A desktop of three barely clad blond women wearing six-inch red high heels lit up the screen once it had restarted. Three dozen icons came up around them. Curtis glanced at the man Gibson now moved to uncuff and haul out of the car; well, at least he had normal, healthy appetites to exploit.

Gibson stood back, spreading her jacket as she rested one hand on her hip and the other on her service weapon. "In case you and Chloe never worked together when she was going through the most demoralizing period in her life, this is the reason for it. Curtis, meet Morris O'Brian, computer genius who wastes it all on get-rich-then-desperate-quick schemes, electronic numbers rackets, and whose best friend is Captain Morgan. Most days of the week and Saturday, you can find him fondling women's feet and bullshitting them into 600.00, I-get-to-be-on-top pumps. Morris, this is Curtis Manning, patriot, hero, Head of Field Ops for CTU, guy who earns an honest living. Whatever you planned to tell me, you're telling him or I will arrest you right now."

Manning noted with amusement he didn't dare show that O'Brian's expression never changed throughout the entire "introduction" and he knew better than to offer to shake the shorter man's hand, not that he had the desire to after Cassie had sucked even a pretense of civility out of the situation. "I understand you have some potentially critical information, Mr. O'Brian."

"Yeah, but I've given up expecting any appreciation for it. Before I say a word, I want immunity, federal immunity. I had no idea what these bastards were up to and any hint that I came down here to work with you people and a few of my other… clients might think they have a reason to be nervous about their… tax statements. Are we clear?"

"You let me see the information, I'll pretend you just found it for Chloe's sake, and then I'll call the Attorney General. Are we clear… now?"

Morris O'Brian stood frozen for a moment, his dark eyes not moving but his peripheral vision catching the cold smile on Gibson's face. Manning was in her pocket, he guessed, and going by their body language and the closeness with which they were standing, maybe more than professionally. He finally met the woman's eyes and then nodded once at the imposing black man, "No problem." O'Brian reached into his pocket and retrieved a slip of torn off, yellow paper. "Show of good faith: check out this address. It's the location of the contractor's headquarters. It's different than the one on the records. They told me they had a concern about being incorporated up in L.A. County. That address is down in Fullerton. They'd have me show up here but I'd work there."

Manning took a slip of paper and shared a glance with Gibson when she finished shaking her head disbelievingly in Morris's direction, withholding comment for once and manhandling him over before the laptop. "Great. Fine. Let's see the rest."

"All right, just a second." With a final glance at Gibson he bent over and once again pulled up the diagram of the Cerulean Cove. He began working his way through a series of encryptions and listened to Gibson behind him as she called in the Fullerton address and ordered that a S.W.A.T. team close in on it with extreme caution. It took him all of six minutes before he got down to the final screen and he stared at the cursor blinking at the end of the last line for a long moment before he turned. There was a determination on his face that Gibson never recalled seeing before and also more than a touch of regret. O'Brian very pointedly put his back to her when he straightened, looked at Manning. "You don't see what you want, I was never here."

"I told you we were good. Don't waste my time."

Morris relented and struck the final key. "This is an access code to the back door near the maintenance rooms. Don't say it; yes, they would have changed them after I was gone but I put in a hidden override code even they don't know about."

"And who was your customer for that?" Gibson demanded.

"I thought that'd be obvious to a hotshot detective. Me."

A snarl darkened the sandy-haired woman's expression. "Let me guess, were you just gonna' slip in one night and transfer your fee if your deal fell through or you were just come in and take a few hundred grand worth of ashtrays?"

"I'd earned the money, hadn't I? Or… I might have done it because I was suspicious of them, too. I am here, right?"

Curtis Manning pulled the programmer around by the arm. "You're here, but nobody's handing out any secret medals yet. Cassie showed me the marked gaps in the structure and I showed it to the ordnance team. Perkins believes the ones at the top would be prime locations for incendiaries. The center location where we believe the hostages are would be the right place to put a massive shaped charge to direct a blast upward and outward. The one in the base would probably be a standard detonation designed to bring the rest of the building down."

Gibson glanced up at the circular building confounding them. "Set the top half of the building on fire, then blow it to hell so you have not just debris, but flaming debris coming down and then you blow the rest of into the surrounding buildings. Exactly how the hell did you get this job, Morris? Blast fax a resume' to everyone on the FBI's Most Wanted List?"

The Englishman's head dropped for a long moment. His lips were tight when he looked up and even in a darkness that pulsed with emergency vehicle lights she could see that he was blushing fiercely. "I never got a hint of any of this. It was a job. My God, I thought I'd be protecting the people inside there when I took it. Have you even heard that part?"

"I heard the part about a blank Swiss account for an allegedly clean job. You give a whole new meaning to Monster dot com, you know that?" Gibson scowled as O'Brian's head dropped again, then she looked up at the building toward the floor nearly half-way up that was lit, but barely, all the way around. She suddenly took Manning by the arm to turn him from the diagram on the laptop. "Hold on. I'm missing something. What do you mean… where you "believe" the hostages are? The function room, on the probably phony blue prints… and the real ones Morris kept, was the same. Couldn't you tell if they were moved out of there? We've got S.W.A.T and surveillance on the floors of every building with a clear line of sight on that level."

Curtis sighed and, without realizing it, crossed his other arm over his chest and covered her hand, a move not unnoticed by O'Brian even though he was now behind them. "There's some type of heavy reflective treatment on the glass. We can't get any clear images. There are still some heat signatures we can detect but whether it's the hostages we can't tell. The signal's too blurred for a count. I had one short conversation with Bill Buchanan, too short for pinpoint triangulation, and they had sense enough to deactivate the phone's GPS. Short of storming the place and getting everyone killed, all we can do is wait for them to make the next move."

Morris sighed thinly and glared up at the building himself. He should have been more suspicious. Gibson was right… as far as his selection of employers this time. He'd have to work doubly hard to get his own, now severely altered agenda accomplished. He broke into their pondering of the building, knowing they were not lost in an unhappy reverie but trying to think their way out of the situation. "Cass, Mr. Manning. I'll try and see if I kept a file of their accounts payable, see if I can find who manufactured that glass. Maybe they know a way past it they'd share."

Manning turned, a neutral smile on his face, perhaps one intended to take the razor-sharp edge off the glare Cassie was still directing at him. "All right, thank you."

"I'll keep my eyes open for anything else, too. May as well burn a few more bridges since I'm here."

Gibson offered him a tired, bitter, and cold laugh. "You're here because the authorities are involved already; your name will eventually come up, and mostly because, once again, you've probably slaughtered your piggy bank." There was frustration and disappointment in her tone as she finished, and the tension suddenly seemed to fade from her posture. She retained the suspicion and anger, but both were now oddly tempered with sudden reason. "You probably do want to help now because Chloe is in there but the first reason you showed up is to cover your ass with her and the law. Let's not play each other this time. I don't have energy to spare wanting to throttle you." She sighed and twitched an eyebrow. "Oh… and maybe you came here for a bit of revenge, too, but you know what? As long as the information is right, that's fine by me."

Curtis watched the exchange with more patience than he might have otherwise because he knew that he would have to rely heavily on O'Brian in the hours to come and he wanted as much information as he could get by which to judge him. He gathered that O'Brian played both sides of the legal fence morally but he was by no means a fool, in his technical skills or his ability to make a situation come out to his advantage. He suspected one of the few times things that hadn't was his marriage to Chloe and Cassie was likely to have been no small part of that. He couldn't imagine Chloe married to a man who was this ethically bankrupt so in all likelihood, whatever had happened since their divorce he'd changed for the worse -- and maybe he blamed Gibson for that as well. The Field Commander took a short breath and grabbed them both by shoulder, "Okay, we all know where we stand and right now I don't care if the two of you want to kill each other unless it gets in the way. Cassie, we already have two officers down."

Gibson snapped her shoulder free of his grip in an instant, her eyes flaring more brightly than the array of flashing red and blue lights that still surrounded them. Her voice, in contrast, was deadly quiet when she spoke. "The hell if I need you to tell me that. Just keep in mind, however you use him, his conscience is always up for bid."

Manning opened his mouth to reply and was cut off by a sniff of laughter from Morris O'Brian, who was now glaring up at his former relative with as much animosity as she was offering him. He pulled his shoulder free in turn and sat down on the hood of the car. "You're right, it is, so here's the real thing; you only have to risk two more lives. Cass, remember when I said I could get you in there. Well, forget the accent, Darling; that wasn't a royal "you", it was just… you." He pointed his finger at Gibson slowly, an equally lethargic smile spreading over his face. "I can open that door but I can only do it for three seconds. I can let one person in and then I'll have to reset the override code and all that'll get us is another three seconds but it'll take another few hours."

Gibson heard him, absorbing all the information but not caring beyond the fact that his now stated intent was for her to go into the Cerulean Cove… alone. Manning shook his head quickly, his disgust with the British man now matching Gibson's. "That wasn't the deal. No one said anything about anyone going in alone, much less using your information to send in someone you hate. I haven't called the Attorney General yet, Mr. O'Brian; so you'd better think about your terms. Find a way to expand that time inter--."

Morris's face grew flushed even in the darkness. "Look, if I wanted to blow this for you, I'd be offering to send all of you in. As it is, I can't, but I know from personal experience just what my dear sister-in-law is capable of and that she knows me enough to take the opportunity I'm offering--."

"Opportunity! Is that how you categorize offering to send someone in there, let alone someone you desp--!"

"Curtis! Forget it! Forget it! Just… forget it!"

Manning stopped his declarations and turned toward Gibson as her shouts faded, and to his shock, found her quietly and very vigorously… laughing. She met his gaze, now rife with confusion and frustration, with a roll of her eyes. "Don't bother. I'll go. I'm going. The bastard's right… and this is what he planned all along. You can call in one of the liaisons from the day shift. I'm absolutely replaceable… and I know why he's doing this; it won't work but I know why."

"Well, I don't know what the hell is going on here now but I'm not playing these games. Cassie, you're better than this. Don't get sucked into him jerking us around," Manning growled, having no desire to deal with the insane personal dynamic suddenly playing out around him. He was now almost as angry at Gibson as he was Chloe's manipulative ex-husband.

Gibson didn't move, didn't look in his direction. "Curtis, it's all fine. It is. … and I am no more worried about going in there with him pushing the buttons that I would be if it were Chlo'. Shoe-Horny here is gonna' do just what we need… to the letter."

Morris managed a cold smile to go with the laughter still sparingly escaping from his former in-law. "Here's the trick, no matter how much of bitch she's ever been, Cassie is just like the rest of her family – she doesn't lie. She'd kill herself or me first before she did with so many lives at stake… so even if I can't stand her – I trust her. If she thinks working with me can save Chloe or anybody else in there - on the price I get left out of the picture - she'll be good for the promise no matter how much it pisses her off. You just tell the world you got lucky; that's not a lie, is it?"

Gibson shook her head, suddenly and eerily, now completely relaxed. Manning knew why… because now the path was clear, now there was something to do. She eyed her former relative with bland contempt. "No, it isn't a lie, this time. Usually you lie so much your tongue has bedsores, but you can forget this trick. Chloe is with Jack Bauer; she's discovered real men and, play the warped hero all you want, you'll never get her back."

Morris shrugged and returned to the computer, entering a code that would bring him closer his entering the Cerulean Cove's security system when the time came. "I don't want her back, Lassie. I just want her to realize I'm not totally the bloody cretin you made me out to be. I came down here to help and if I can undo some of the damage you did to us, while I'm saving your life and maybe a few others, I'll take that, too. I'll get you in there and out and Chloe knows as well as I do that you'd do this if anyone was on the other side of a comm and you got the chance."

Curtis's attention zeroed in on O'Brian at that, his eyebrows climbing toward the top of his skull. "You plan to run comms, too?"

Morris shrugged, now suddenly relaxed himself as he saw things turning back where he wanted them… his way. "I'm that second life you have to risk, Mr. Manning. I'm sure you didn't have time to check before she dragged you out here but I met Chloe because we were both doing the same job for CTU."

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Working up the tears was the easy part; she only had to let go, at least a little, and give the terror and worry a place to escape. Until now she had been operating on cold anger and necessity, the kind that ruled her psyche when she was watching someone else out in the field. O'Brian gave Jack Bauer's hand one final squeeze and came to her feet. She caught Martha Logan's eye as she stood, her lips twitching and meeting the older woman's, initiating the communication that only females seemed to share as she held the other woman's gaze for a long moment and then looked slowly down at Bauer, pale and motionless on the bright green sofa. Her eyes raised again to meet the former First Lady's and she matched the almost undetectable smile that the blond woman in the blood-stained gown offered, a smile that was a promise to take care of Jack, if she could, after whatever was about to happen.

Chloe let Jack's hand drop and grimaced as her eyes burned from another round of tears. They slid down her face, scalding her with the knowledge that she might have just experienced what would be the last living touch they would ever share. She looked down at Bauer one last time before she stepped away. He was just as she'd left him, expressionless and seemingly unconscious and she felt courage flare in her gut. He was able to do his part, be so still and seemingly unaffected only because, even now, even plunging into something she had no real training to do… he trusted her. That was enough. It had always been. It would be again. The tears once more mostly for effect, Chloe O'Brian walked up to the man with the radio, the one who had made it clear he was in charge as his hand crawled over her skin.

Nirmala Hassal looked at the bedraggled, half-dressed woman approaching him with a distant curiosity. She'd come to beg. They always did, perhaps even to offer her small body for his pleasure in exchange for help for the man she had been nursing and stroking while offering meaningless comforts. He'd take the amusement of her pain while they let their leaders boil in their own sweat. He would return to the Speaker of the House in about a half hour, after the man had had ample time to think about what he would say to the President. He bowed at the small blond woman when she stopped a yard away from him, her expressive eyes flashing over to the white-haired man sitting on the floor and who was watching her with surprise and sudden worry.

"How can I be of service to you, a new dress perhaps? You seem to have damaged yours on your failed adventures."

Chloe bit her figurative tongue and glanced up at the dark-skinned man. "I don't care about my dress. I care about my boyfriend. He needs medical attention. I want you to let him go, just like we saw them take out Senator Freeman."

"Your boyfriend and you have caused me a great deal of trouble, killed one of my men, and took me off my schedule to surprise your authorities. We found the computer you stole and the message it was repeating. You're a very clever woman in that regard but if you think I am inclined to offer you or your bleeding boy--."

"I didn't come here to beg." The next words, as they often did, came out in a tumble. She could only hope they were all the ones she needed, and that Mr. Buchanan couldn't hear her; he'd never understand and she didn't have a way to explain. "I can offer you something… a deal… an exchange. That computer… I'm the one that programmed it, that's what I do. I can use satellites and I can get you classified data. I don't care, whatever you want. Just let Jack go. You can keep me."

Nirmala Hassal looked down at the woman before him, and realized she was trembling now as well as crying. "How long have you served your government, Ms. O'Brian?"

"Twelve years, about. Look, Jack was captured once, tortured. I can't let him go through anything like that, not again, not if it's up to me."

Hassal glanced over at the pale man involuntarily. As far as the records they'd found went Bauer was an instructor. He might have some field experience but the records didn't show much. "Whatever you have to offer… it's not what I came here for, is it?"

Chloe took a breath and found her opening. She wiped the tears from her face and glanced back at Bill Buchanan, a façade of guilt darkening her face. "No, I guess not. But it is always better to get more than what you thought you would, right?"

Hassal lifted his head and looked down the shaft of his nose at the desperate woman before him, wondering how far he could trust her sudden offer of betrayal. "Meaning?"

"I don't know who you are or what you're doing here now exactly but whatever you're doing, you'll need money. If not for this mission, the next one. You can test me first. I'll get you whatever money you want, right in front of your men, and then after you let Jack go, I'll get you classified information, whatever you want, something you can use, something you can sell, I don't care."

The offer caused Hassal to pause. He knew if they had to follow through with the plan to sink the submarine and have China retrieve the missiles, they would be keeping four of them for their own. It would be better if they did have something to, perhaps, offer them that was just as valuable and that would let them keep the full issue of weapons for themselves. … And he could test her first, see how far she could go. Hassal dropped his radio back into a pocket and looked her over again. "And this man you love? How will he think of you if you betray your country, the one you both serve? You will be betraying him, too, won't you, my dear?"

Chloe glanced at Bauer's blood-stained and inert body and back at the swarthy man before her, "I don't care what he'll think, as long as he survives. I love him enough to let hate me, to let everybody hate me. Okay?"

Nirmala Hassal swallowed a smile, not wanting the woman to see the sense of contempt that suddenly filled him. Better that she believe he remained suspicious. "All right, a test then. I'll take you to a computer. You have twenty minutes to transfer from one of your American banks 125,000,000.00 dollars into a private account held by my country. Do that and I'll release Mr. Bauer to a medical team, just like the Senator. You can watch them get to a safe area, and then we'll see what else you are good for. Once a traitor, always a traitor, hmph? It'll be too late for you then."

Chloe O'Brian let a sigh of relief, surrender, and feigned self-loathing escape her then glanced back to meet the intensely curious gaze of Bill Buchanan again, certain he was thinking the worst given her track record with Jack and the fact that they were now more than faithful friends. "It's too late now. One condition, wherever you take me to do the transfer, you take Jack. I don't want him out of my sight until he's getting help."

"Of course not. That would mean you trusted me, and that would be a stupid thing for a smart woman like you, no?" Hassal turned to the bald man who had captured them before, the immense wall of flesh who seemed bigger than Curtis by at least sixty pounds. "Get. Bauer, take them up to the penthouse then come back here. Leave Amir and Behari. Agent O'Brian is to be allowed access to the secured computer to transfer that 125,000,000.00 into our private account. Once she's done so, we let Bauer go."

Hassal had spoken quietly, but not quietly enough. Most of the last few sentences reached the ears of Bill Buchanan. He came to his feet suddenly and drew the attention of the rifles held in the hands of men surrounding the male hostages, all of them by now somewhere between nervous and bored. "Chloe, what the hell are you doing? What's going on?!"

Chloe stiffened, her fear that Hassal had spoken too loudly giving his huge flunky his orders confirmed. She looked back at the CTU director with palpable regret, meeting his eyes for only a moment. "I'm sorry, Sir. Guess this'll be the last violation you have to put on my file."

"Chloe, damn you!! You know better than anyone Jack is not going to thank--!"

"I don't give a crap what Jack thinks about this, Mr. Buchanan! I can't. I only care that he gets out of here alive. He's gonna' hate me, so… take care of him. Please!?" She turned her back to Buchanan, hating what she was doing to him, but glad that her ruse had been so convincing that Buchanan had fallen for it, had thought she'd actually struck a deal to save Jack. His face flush, his eyes scalding her back, she let herself be led out of the room behind the hulking giant once again carrying Jack and the two men the leader had called Amir and Behari.

Bill Buchanan sat back down in a huff, his expression lost and disbelieving… and at the same time painfully aware of his memories of Chloe and Jack being the epitome of two people against the world. He'd always believed that that trait would work out for the best but he could only assume now that Chloe had broken, had seen Jack Bauer suffer once too often. It was hard to blame her, hard and far from impossible to think that his best analyst had possibly become a traitor under the circumstances. She had turned against the government rules, if for the greater good, any number of times to bring down Charles Logan. With the right motive, she was, he knew, more than capable of doing so again, especially if the motive involved Jack Bauer being in trouble. He buried his head in his hands for a moment, forcing himself to accept the very strong possibility that Chloe had turned on them all. At the very least that was the assumption under which he now had to work.

Jack Bauer fought hard to keep from grunting as he was dropped down onto yet another sofa, this one much firmer. His eyes closed, he could only guess at what was going on. He welcomed the familiar touch of O'Brian's small, warm hands regardless of the conditions when she returned to his side, checking the improvised strips of bandaging around his arm. She left and was back a moment later, lifting his head and shoulders onto a pillow and tossing a dark brown blanket over him. A voice sounded far behind her a few moments later, just as her lips pressed her tears against his broad forehead. "Woman, if you do want him to live, move! We're ready."

The man she'd figured out was called Amir as they'd talked amongst themselves on the way up to the penthouse had spoken. While she'd been fussing over Jack, the behemoth that had carried him up here had left. Chloe straightened and let go of Bauer's hand again, but this time it was without the fear that had marked their earlier loss of contact. This was their plan, this was just what they wanted; the plan had had to change but at least they had one again. If they couldn't get out, they'd do their damage from within.

The computer was near the wide penthouse windows covered only in part by long tan curtains, facing it on a small table. A single bundle of cabling lead out from it and down through an opening in the floor. From this height, the nearby squads of police and emergency vehicles were out of view but the reflection of the swirling lights danced across the glass surfaces of every skyscraper around them. What was also in view was a reflection of the rest of the room in the glass. Chloe sat down with a huff and rubbed her eyes, "Close those curtains, please. I don't want to see outside." She frowned. Good, let them think she was weak. It served her purpose now.

Amir offered her a shrug, but did as she asked, assuming what the woman had no stomach to see the people she was betraying. Chloe worked for several seconds, familiarizing herself with the computer and eventually leaning down to look at the bundle of wires. "Call your boss; tell him I need thirty minutes, at least twenty-five, and twenty minutes more to get a confirmation. This damn thing is too slow. Is it on a cable modem?"

Amir rubbed his thin mustache and frowned. "Yes."

"Well, with no satellite access, it slows things down and I'm only trying to get into Wells Fargo and that's right here in the city. I need to code to enter into the right account, too. I guess one of you have that." She frowned as they moved to either side of the small table, one on each side of her.

Amir, to her right, the older and sharper of the two men, smiled coldly. "Of course. Nirmala relies on me as second in command."

"I thought that was the big guy."

"Sukumal? He's an idiot. Nirmala just recognized a good piece of meat."

Behari suddenly stirred from simply staring in disgust as the older man bragged to the American woman. "Does the General rely on you to talk too much, too?"

Amir's head spun around from watching Chloe O'Brian work. He glared at the smaller, clean-shaven man with contempt and then resignation and they each fell into an uncomfortable silence, broken only by Amir informing Nirmala Hassal, the alleged People's Hand, that the configuration of the connection would mean they needed more time. Pages scrolled by under O'Brian's quick hands, figures and codes flicking by on the screen under the simple brick red and yellow Wells Fargo icon. Suddenly she shrank the text on the screen and resized the windows on the monitor so that both the transfer screen and the screen that held the security overrides were side-by-side. She sat back and looked at both men, then looked down at the keyboard for several moments, her cheeks puffing out in disgust.

"It's done, my part of it. You said you had the account code?" She glanced up at Amir and folded in on herself slightly, "I've got the cursor in the right place. You just need to enter it."

Amir gave his compatriot a final asinine, superior glance and circled around to where he could reach the numeric keypad, bending down over O'Brian so that he could see the tiny figures on the screen. He was close enough to smell and her nose wrinkled as she leaned away from him and looked up at the other man. Her voice was tense and a few decibels higher when she spoke this time. "125,000,000.00 American for your… cause… whatever it is. Don't you want to see this? Once your boss here enters the code, the money will transfer, I'll put back their firewall and they won't know it ever happened till it's too late." Regret, only partially feigned, came over her face at that point and she turned to look at Bauer, deathly still behind them, absolutely helpless, and mouthed a silent apology. She lingered looking at him long enough to draw the attention of the two men to him as well, and then turned back to the computer, shaking.

Behari laughed softly, no doubt thinking about what a traitor the woman before him was. Nevertheless, he accepted her suggestion, coming to stand behind her alongside Amir. The older one straightened as he finished entering the number and Chloe returned quivering hands to the keyboard.

She hadn't pressed the first key when Behari collapsed away from her and hit the ground, the blanket she had thrown over Jack trapping his upper body. To her right, Amir struck the ground as well, his own combat knife buried deep in his side in the middle of an already huge and still blossoming red stain. Overcome by instinct, Chloe snatched the keyboard up from the table, yanking out the cord as she dropped onto Behari's chest with both knees just as he cleared the blanket from his face. Before he could bring his arms up to defend himself, the broadside of the keyboard edge slammed into the bridge of his nose three times in rapid succession.

Blood splattered in every direction and O'Brian flinched back even as she slammed the keyboard down again, this time into his throat. His trachea dislodged with a sickening, wet 'pop' and Chloe sat back on his stomach for a moment before Jack snatched her up into his arms, the blood-soaked keyboard falling from her suddenly numb fingers. He left her standing alone for a moment, long enough to toss the blanket back over the gory sight.

Chloe O'Brian sank into Bauer's chest the moment he returned to her, holding him tightly in turn, coating each other with the blood of their respective kills. Bauer pushed her back after a moment. "You shouldn't have done that. I would have dealt with them both."

The analyst stood silently for several seconds, willing herself to stop shaking. "I know… and you would have been okay, but I… I just couldn't sit there. Actually, I don't even remember moving. It just happened so… so well, whatever." She paused, a pained expression on her face. "I don't care about him. We're a team, and we're free again, sort of."

Jack nodded and looked down at her. "We have a minute. Clean up. I can't… I don't want to see you with blood all over you. Please."

Chloe looked up at him, the shaking in her body unexpectedly slowing even more. Suddenly nothing mattered but Bauer and her need to make this easier for him. Casting off the last few moments of her life for now, she smiled, going up on her toes to kiss him. "I will. You, too, but in a minute. While you get their stuff, I need to finish here so that they won't be suspicious. We can undo it later, I'm… pretty sure."

Bauer looked down at her with sudden confusion. "Finish? What do you mean?"

"They'll be onto us if this doesn't confirm in twenty minutes. I think they're monitoring it all from somewhere else. If I'm gonna' get us some time… I'm gonna' have to rob Wells Fargo for real."


	8. Chapter 8

Richard Dominguez was a rare figure in politics, one who had chosen not to resort to the baseness he had seen around him, the

Richard Dominguez was a rare figure in politics, one who had chosen not to resort to the baseness he had seen around him, the vindictiveness, or the hints of illegitimate accusations that an opponent could not disprove. He'd made that choice, and somehow, in Washington, still succeeded. He looked at the armed men around them, the bodies of the Secret Service agents, at the women huddled on the floor across the large, tropically decorated room, at the battered finance officer who had been used for a lesson to the rest of them, at the stains on the floor and the furniture where Senator Freeman and then Jack Bauer had given up blood in the melee. Yet the worst he felt was when he looked at the man beside him, the CTU director now wrestling with the idea that one of his senior staff had betrayed them for the sake of the man she loved. Alert even now, he became aware of the other man's scrutiny after a moment and raised his head very slightly.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't be focused on what just happened. I still need to pay attention to what's going on here."

Dominguez shifted his weight toward Buchanan ever so slightly. "Nothing's changed in the last half-hour. Don't worry on that count. This woman - I assume she could do a great deal of harm. She was the one who helped bring down Logan."

Buchanan nodded. "She's proven in the past she'd do anything to support or protect Jack Bauer. I can't believe she'd go this far but I have to assume she has, even if Jack would hate it. She was prepared for that, and I have no way of warning anyone about the danger she could present. Of course, as soon as she sees them let Bauer be taken out of here, she might be planning to…," Buchanan's voice fell off. Chloe wasn't a field agent. She might not have the guts to go through with finding a way to kill herself but if she refused to act for their captors once Jack was safe and away or she believed he was that likely wasn't going to be a problem, and they would see to it that she paid a stiff price before they killed her. …and Jack would pay that price, too. Buchanan turned to look the other man in the eye, seeking a sliver of human contact to help him remember that this was all supposed to be worth it. Dominguez offered him a sad and sympathetic smile, seeming to know exactly what the other man needed. "I'm sorry, Mr. Buchanan."

The CTU director managed a frail, sad smile in return. "How 'bout just Bill?"

"And, how 'bout just Richard?"

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"Are you sure about this?"

Gibson twisted the strip of elastic on her wrist into her hair, glancing around the inside of the trailer before picking up the black sweater and slipping it over her head, unconcerned, of course, about her state of undress in front of Manning. They were in the back of one of the personnel vehicles, one that had stocks of equipment and a few pieces of back-up clothing. The sweater was slightly too big and would stick out a few inches beneath the Kevlar vest. Scowling, she reached for the heavy piece of protective equipment, only to have Manning snatch it away. "I asked you a question."

"And what part of… my completely ignoring it was unclear?"

"All of it."

"Well, then I guess I made my completely unclear poi--."

"Cassie, shut up!" Manning pulled the tall woman around to fully face him. Damn her, this time she was going to give him a straight answer. "We can take Morris in, make him talk. You're letting him use you, maybe get you killed, over what? Putting the nail in the coffin of what Chloe thinks of him? We can't let someone you tell me has a price tag on his conscience dictate how we handle this."

Gibson pulled away from the CTU agent, hesitated for a moment, then took the vest from him. When he didn't fight her, she knew she'd won, knew that he'd accepted the inevitable but had to have a final say, let her know that he wanted to understand something, anything of what she was doing if he lost her, if they all did. "We do that all the time, Curtis; they're called "informants". Besides, I think, maybe, the only decent thing Morris ever did in his life, that he actually meant to do, was love my sister, and he still managed to screw that up. He lost big in some stock market thing when he thought he was going to show her the good life and he lost his reputation everywhere he could score big and be legitimate. So, he started drinking, and the few times Chloe couldn't deal with the drinking, he found another woman that could. Chlo' gave him another chance, and then another, and the third time she found him with another woman I was with her, and the woman was one I'd busted eleven times. The bastard couldn't even have a decent affair, a co-worker, the neighbor's wife, hell – it's L.A. ….even the pizza… boy…. No, he had a… really inexpensive… hooker in my sister's bed. I arrested the bimbo again on the spot. Then… I arrested him and I've never been sorrier in my life that I was collaring perp who didn't resist arrest."

Manning sat down on the side bench of the carrier, glancing at the back door, outside of which Morris O'Brian waited. "Must have been some scene."

"You think? I can remember what color underwear I had on. God love her, as cranky as she is, Chloe wanted to give him another chance. She bloomed late; she'd never been in love before; her nose was always in a book or she'd weird a guy out on one of her "days". The accent, the clever chat up, the flattery – she was easy prey for all of it and so she had all these stupid daydreams about not giving after finally getting married. What she was really thinking was that she wasn't ever going to have another chance with anyone else anyway, but I convinced my little sister she was better than that. ...And then Morris posted bail with the last dollar in their checking account and showed up at my place to ask her to come back… and even assumed telling me to butt out would work."

Surprised at himself, Manning heard a thin laugh escape his lips. "I guess he'd been drinking then."

"I didn't think there was enough booze in the world for someone to make that mistake, but… eh… I was wrong." Cassie grinned herself at that point, more with sarcasm than any construed happiness and shrugged into the vest, paused for a moment then dragged another even larger sweater on over it before continuing. "I trashed him in front of her. I'd pulled an old arrest record I'd been saving. I reminded her she was risking her job with CTU now, too, and then I pulled an Interpol file that had him labeled as possibly conducting suspicious activities, and on his way out I very quietly made it very clear that he could either leave my sister for good or I would arrange for him to meet up with some newbie in MS-13 who was looking to climb the ladder."

Manning took a breath and let it out slowly. "You weren't seri--?"

"Of course not! He didn't know that. The worst part was, he did love her. Maybe he still does; I don't know; I don't care. But the last thing he swore to me was Chloe wasn't going to spend the rest of her life thinking he was everything I told her he was."

"And he thought blackmailing you with the information was the way to do that?"

"Look at it from his hole in the ground; he could have gotten the hell out of town before his name came up. He could have taken the chance it wouldn't and kept his London yap shut. He could have given us the information anonymously, but he showed up, made his offer, and tossed in a few freebies, and if it all works out in the end, he looks like he did the right thing, for him, just the same way any other source would and he protects his ass."

"And the part about you?"

Gibson sighed and reached for a weapons belt, strapping it on as she leaned up and kissed Curtis Manning. "All the same. If he wasn't who he was and we could send anybody, you'd be sending a CTU special ops agent, but since he's him, he only trusts me, and since he's going to go out of his way to make sure I get out of this alive for Chloe at least, I might have an edge over somebody who had a comm agent who was a little less motivated. If I know I might have an edge, even a tiny one, Chloe knows damn well, I wouldn't let someone else go in and he made it just my call… well, almost. I can't fault him for his selfish logic and Chloe loved him before in spite of it, so why not now?"

Manning lifted his head up from the sidewall of the van. "Because now it's you and now she knows better?"

"Damn right, but I guess the genius hasn't worked out that part. Promise me something?"

"What choice do I have?"

"Good point. I have all the emotional cards at the moment, don't I? Oh, come on… at least I admit it and don't jerk you around when I use them."

Manning came to his feet and embraced her, enjoying the feel of a woman who had the size and the strength that would let him hold her as tightly as he wanted. "What do you want?"

Her words muffled into his shoulder, Gibson sighed and then spoke, her tone somehow both acidic and resigned. "This isn't just about Morris, Babe. This my choice, my judgment, too. I can do this, Curtis. I know how to move quietly; I can protect myself; and I took an oath, too but… if I don't make it and my sister or Jack, or better yet, both of them do, don't let 'em kill the son of a bitch."

Curtis shook his head where it rested above Gibson's. "What about me?"

Gibson backed up, letting him go to slap his chest lightly with both hands. "You either. He's got enough conscience to be in hell over it if I don't make it and my little, little, little sister will hate him for good. …and even if we all come out of this in one piece, Morris already knows the competition is lot stiffer these days," her eyebrows twitched upward, "Probably a whole lot stiffer but even sister's don't share some things."

Manning shook his head slightly, fighting a slightly embarrassed grin. "You know you can't kiss your mother with that mouth, so you'll have to do with me." He leaned in to follow through and brushed her lips with his own. "We hero types get all the best girls, don't we?" He sighed then forced a smiled and straightened. "Don't do anything but get in there and get the numbers and the locations. We'll keep working on getting full teams in. I got a couple of wizkids on their way down from Cal Tech to give Morris a hand. Once you have a count and a location and maybe who these people are, get out. If you do then I'll have the worse job, explaining how the Hell we got anything for Homeland Security and the President and still keep O'Brian out of it."

"Well, you know what we say at the 77th: snitches are bitches." She grinned one last time and took hold of his arms, backing away so that that their hands shared one last moment of contact before Gibson flung the back door of the transport open and looked down at Morris with a smile that directed more westerly could have frozen the Pacific. He was working at a small table next to the van, his left wrist in a handcuff chained to the fender.

"I love your taste in jewelry Morris, goes great with the pimp gold and the absence of your pawned wedding ring ."

Morris looked up from the screen before him only for a moment. "Your Mr. Manning thought I might cut out on the deal and take off."

"Not on his own he didn't." Gibson replied, her tone quiet and cold, so unlike her usual self that Curtis suddenly felt like he was following a stranger down the steps of the van. On the blacktop again, Cassie slowly pulled her automatic, checking the magazine and then screwing on the silencer as she sat down in the folding chair facing him. "Okay, Shoe-boy, this is it. You tell me how this is going to work."

Morris's lips pursed as he studied the tall woman across from him, his uncuffed hand scratching under his chin. "You might be surprised at me, Darling. I have to go with you, at least part of the way, so we can run a hardwire cable outside the range of the interference they're generating."

Curtis came to stand behind Gibson, his eyes darting around the dark alley where they had parked the personnel vehicle, away from the center of operations, to let Morris work in anonymity. "You'd do that?"

"Yeah, well, maybe not before I knew Chloe was in there." Morris turned the computer so that the man and the woman could see it and enlarged an area near the base of the of the hotel on the screen. "Delivery entrance. They've certainly got it sealed now but the trucks go down this incline. I'll be out of sight of anyone inside. I'll just take batteries and wireless transmitter, leave it outside the range of the interference and run a cable from it down to where I'll be. Whatever my lovely and unopinionated ex-sister-in-law shares over the comm, I can tell you right off. Without it being hard-wired, we're not getting anything out of there now otherwise."

Manning looked down at Gibson with a scowl. "Well?"

"Doesn't change a thing for me, except at least now I get to know if that building goes, he goes, too."

Curtis glanced up at the circular building towering over them five blocks away, needing to turn his attention for a moment away from the man and woman seated before him, their animosity as palpable as his own toward whomever had brought them all into this situation. He turned back and narrowed his gaze on O'Brian. "Tell me exactly what you need as far as equipment. I'll come back here with it. Try not to kill each other before I do."

Gibson raised her hands and smiled coldly. "Get me a dozen more cartridges for my taser, oh, …and small Diet Coke but a large order of fries."

Manning stared for a moment and then, with a grain of disbelief, heard himself laughing again. He moved off without a word, shaking his head, not realizing yet that the tension in his shoulders had nearly vanished. Morris watched him walk off, his mouth drawn into a loose knot as he let his eyes drift over to meet the eyes of his former relative. He couldn't tell if she was faking her sudden nonchalance about what they were about to do or really was taking things so fatalistically that her lack of tension was genuine. After a moment of mutual disregard, Morris shut the computer down and stuffed it into the bag beside him, along with four spare batteries. He straightened up and suddenly lifted his left hand, along with the small chain that was still attached and had been rattling against the bumper with his every move. "You do realize, love, you're gonna' have to uncuff me?"

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Chloe left the bathroom to find Jack Bauer on his knees, scrubbing at the blood on the carpeting with something from the mini-kitchen. The bodies of the two men were out on the terrace of the penthouse, dragged there on the blanket that he had thrown over the head of the one Chloe had killed. Whatever he was using the blood was almost gone. You'd have to know where to look to find it. She hung back for a moment, watching him work, favoring the arm skimmed by the bullet fired by the giant named Sukumal. She was afraid he was reacting to the blood, thinking back to the time when his own was spattered around him. Taking a deep breath she dropped to her knees beside him, her lower lip in her teeth, to rest a hand on the one dragging the rag over the short pile carpet. "Are you okay?"

Bauer straightened and turned toward her, managing a half-smile. "I'm fine but I could use your help. We need to get rid of the bodies."

Chloe frowned and looked at them again. "Where are we supposed to--? Oh." The answer came unspoken as she saw their new position, directly beneath the shoulder high concrete wall of the terrace. "You're sure they're dead, right?"

Jack gave her a tender look as they stood up. She'd been fine in the heat of the moment but she had no stomach for finishing someone off if they were helpless, no matter who they were. "Yeah. Mine bled out and yours, you dislodged his trachea."

Chloe nodded and then shrugged, her eyes flashing upward. "If our kids ever want to hear horror stories we'll just tell them about our dates." Ever the pragmatist, she jerked her chin at the terrace before he had time to answer. "Won't they see…?"

"I climbed up to take a look. I'm fairly sure we're behind the service entrance on this side of the function room, away from the windows."

Chloe nodded and led the way as they went back out on the balcony, working together to heave the bodies of the first man over the shoulder high ledge. She closed her eyes and turned away as they gave the body a final shove and sent it spiraling into the darkness to the concrete some four hundred feet below. She covered her ears before the distant sound of the impact reached them, her mathematical mind estimating the time it would take the body to strike. Jack gave her a strained but admiring look as she lifted her hands off her ears a split second after the small, single thump reached his own. Without a word, she moved to help him with the next body and repeated the procedure. O'Brian lifted her head with the same excellent timing and scowled. "I guess the rest of them are supposed to think they took us somewhere if they come up here."

"That's what I'm hoping, just buying us a little more time. Get something dark from behind the bar, pour it on the floor where I cleaned up most of the blood. It didn't work as well as I'd hoped." He pointed at the spots next to the computer table and as she nodded, headed for the bathroom himself. Draining two slow-pouring bottles of red wine on the carpet, on the spots he had cleaned and in front of the sofa, Chloe listened to the sound of his retching for as long as she could and then tossed the bottles to the floor and followed him into the bathroom. Saying nothing, she wrapped her hand around his head, her lips pressing the back of his neck as he finished vomiting then reached for the clean rag he had already dampened. When he straightened she wiped his face with a cold washcloth as he held her gaze in the gold-framed mirror. "I'm fine, Chloe. I've had to do that since I bashed my head."

"You've probably got a concussion." O'Brian's lips twisted into an ironic smile. He was okay. He was okay as far as handling the mess they were in. She wasn't sure how she knew but she did. "So… that means we should try and get the hell out of here this time. There's got to be a way around these jerks except we don't know how many of them there are or even who they are. I hope Mr. Buchanan's been getting something out of them. Oh, crap. Mr. Buchanan; he probably hates me."

Bauer took the cloth from her and tossed it into the sink with the one he'd been using, then he grabbed them both and threw them over the terrace wall as well, on his way back to her he collected the weapons of the men they had killed. He offered her a pistol that she tucked inside the belt made from the remains of the hem of her dress still tied around her waist. Jack watched her and then grasped her hand, leading the way as they headed downward once again. "Bill will get over it as soon as he finds out you didn't turn on the government and we'll sort out the rest with Wells Fargo. If nothing else they can hit the FDIC up for some of the money."

Chloe pulled him to a stop just long enough to see her grinning and they resumed their downward trek of the flight of stairs as she explained. "It's okay. While I was waiting for the access into the bank, I went to a secured site and downloaded a passive keylogger into their computer. I have their account number and their passwords if they use the computer later and I downloaded a slow virus into their hard drive while I had the system open. There's a file of them kept in reserve at CTU in case of something like this. It'll take a little while but I wanted to buy us some time before it all starts going haywire on them and they get suspicious. For now all they'll see is… I robbed the bank."

Jack stopped moving when she stopped talking, long enough only to plant a kiss on her forehead, mindful of the fact he'd just finished throwing up. She stifled a smile and rushed to keep up with him as they headed downward so quickly she barely felt as if she was touching the stairs. She wondered about the speed at which they were moving but decided Jack was Jack… he knew best what they should be doing to get out of here. It was only a few flights later that they stopped, catching their breath on the landing of the 27th floor. Jack listened carefully when their breathing no longer echoed off the concrete stairwell. Weapons held ready they stepped out into the hallway that wound between the rooms and listened to the eerie silence. Bauer leaned back against the fake wood of the slightly curved wall that spoke of the exterior shape of the Cerulean Cove, glancing furtively up and down the blue carpeted corridor before closing his eyes. Chloe backed up against the wall across from him. "What are we doing here?"

"We need a plan."

"I'm not leaving you."

The words tumbled out of her mouth so fast that Bauer was unable to resist the smile that came to his own. "I wasn't going to suggest that. Don't worry."

"I thought the plan was to get the hell out of here."

"That's a goal. That's not a plan. We need to get to somewhere they're less likely to have guards, and we don't have a lot of that grace time left from robbing Wells Fargo."

"No, we don't. Could we not talk about that until I fix it? So, what do we do for a plan? We don't know where they are, but I think they must have other hostages somewhere if they didn't kill them. The crowd at the Intelligence Subcommittee thing, we weren't the only people in the hotel."

"If they didn't need them for anything, they're probably dead. Everyone they gave a damn about getting for their main purpose was in that room, but there has to be something more to this. Important as they are, Gardner would never give in to terrorists over the people who were in there, not after what he went through with Logan and the pact we have with Suvarovs. They'd know we'd sacrifice those members of Congress and everyone else in there if it was just them and they let Freeman be taken for medical attention. They have some other leverage for getting what they want."

O'Brian frowned and then scowled. "That's all well and good, Jack, and obviously even if you did get whacked in the head, you can still think pretty clearly because I hadn't figured all that out, but right now I only care about getting us out of here so I can take care of you and then we can let somebody else take care of these idiots."

He straightened and crossed the wood paneled hallway, taking her in his arms and resting his aching head atop her own. "I want that, too, but we have to start thinking like them, knowing what their agenda is will help us do that. If we have a chance to learn more, we're going to have to take it."

"You mean like grab somebody if we find them alone and see… what… they can tell us?"

"Eventually, but first…. I'll find out what they can tell me. If we get hold of one of them, I do want you to go away from me then, just far enough, only for as long as it ta--."

"Forget it, Jack. Whatever has to happen, I'm not leaving you. I don't care what you have to do. I told you my hands aren't clean either; people die because of what I do, too."

Bauer pushed her back, looking down into her unflinching gaze and feeling the anger and the frustration well up within him, nearly powerfully enough to block out the calm he needed to think their way out of his. He tightened his hold on her arms and closed his eyes, his long lashes suddenly gleaming with hot grief he couldn't afford. "This isn't about you. It's about me, about what I want you to see me for now, how I wanted to see myself. It's about putting what we've both had to do behind us. I wanted that over and it never seems to stop."

Chloe stood frozen, her own tears escaping without a fight. "Whatever we have to do to get out of here, nothing can make me think less of you. Do you understand that? "

A handful of breaths passed before he relented and then released her, reminding himself of the danger they were in and the time they didn't have. He reached for her hand again and they started moving across the radius of the Cerulean Cove and Chloe could tell from his solid strides and the clear, cold gleam in his eyes that he had that plan, that he knew where they should go, and that somehow… this was all going to end badly, for someone else.

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Patel Amrish handed the paper back to the man standing behind him, cradling yet another now cold glass of mint tea in his other hand. "She turned on them. We now have an additional 125,000,000.00 in our accounts, transferred from the American bank. We have paid for a fourth of this operation, all because of a woman's weakness." He looked away from Bhakti to the long-haired woman a few stations down from him. "I know we would suffer no such fate at your hands, Yana." The young woman turned from her computer for a moment, smiling and saying nothing, surviving like she always had despite her gifts with these machines. She had too much to pay attention to, checking the transmitters that were casting a shield of interference around the Cerulean Cove and watching the time carefully so that she could take it down at the intervals where the others would report in, and take it down at Bhakti's request when he wanted to communicate with Hassal.

Kathirivan looked at the paper in his hand and smiled down at the younger man. "This money they love – it blinds them and gives us a weapon, only this time they used it against themselves. I'll call Hassal in a few minutes and congratulate him. Maybe he'll be my Minister of War and Finance both, hmph?"

Amrish smiled and looked back at the screen of the man next to him, monitoring the people they had working at the reservoirs feeding New York City, the fail-safe, the ones who would release the toxins if called upon, first in the Croton, then in the Ashokan if a few hundred thousand deaths were not enough. On the next screen further left was a live picture from a camera inside the newly opened Van Courtland Park valve chamber in the Bronx; innocuous, unseen by anyone who wasn't aware of its significance, a dirty shred of a rag was tied around the railing they had agreed upon. If there were a problem, a hold up of some sort, the rag would be moved to the next railing down. For now, all was as it needed to be.

Somewhere, Rhajani was waiting for a signal if needed and he would release the final element of the toxin. In minutes it would combine with the two others when they were released, by the people who it had been Rhajani's job to recruit. The chemicals would enter the waters flowing in from the Croton Watershed then, inert and undetected, flow into the chamber and mix with the final molecule at the pre-arranged point. It was inert also on its own but combined the three would become lethal. While the officials were dealing with that crisis, the other toxin would flow down from the Ashokan, a different one – one that would catch them while their resources and attentions were elsewhere. The American President would have no choice but to give in before they did that, Patel was nearly certain. They had no stomach for sacrifice here and once the toxin was released inside the Bronx they could reassure the President that the rate of distribution would be too fast to stop the deaths of millions.

Kathirivan was studying the screen also. A few minutes more and he would call Hassal and tell him to have the Speaker call the President, once he had been briefed on the deal: the submarine Alexander's nuclear payload or a few million dead Americans and the destruction of the Cerulean Cove. He wondered how many foreign architecture students were about to be expelled from American colleges.

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"Just a second, one last thing."

Gibson dropped her eyes from the Cerulean Cove towering darkly before them back to Morris O'Brian, disgust deepening the long lines of her face as she watched him pull a flask out of the bag he was carrying. "Oh, son of a bi--. I'm not going in there if you plan to be at the other end of this pouring your spine down your thro--. What the hell are you doing?" She fell silent as the bald man poured the contents down the front of his fleece jacket. Whatever it was, it was strong and cheap and she suddenly understood his intent. If he got any warning they were about to find him, he'd move away from the equipment and pretend to be a homeless drunk. Gibson offered him a scowl of approval and suddenly reached into her own bag, pulling out a bottle of water with a valve cap and taking a drink. Lowering it from her lips, she inverted it suddenly and squeezed, sending a fat jet of cold water directly at O'Brian's crotch.

He leapt back in surprise, gasping and biting back the loud stream of curses he was about to unleash on her before remembering their location. They were on the far side of the narrowest street across from the Cerulean Cove, hiding in the last cover across from the incline down to the delivery garage. In the alley on the far side of the small building beside them, Morris had placed the wireless transmitter and its power unit, wrapping the wire around the small building. If anyone became curious and attempted to trace it, they would have to come around the back of the structure and find themselves in the clutches of the CTU tac team now positioned there.

Morris was still fuming and wiping the water stain from the crotch of his tan pants when their headsets crackled and Curtis' voice came into their ears. "What the hell is going on there?"

Gibson smiled gamely at her ex-in-law, "Nothing very impressive, I'm sure." Morris smiled venomously at her and straightened, rubbing the last of the moisture he could onto his gray jacket as Gibson continued, her voice sheer business all of a sudden. "I was just helping Morris put the final touches on his cover. Don't worry, I'm sure he can pull it off." O'Brian bit his tongue and ignored her, reminding himself he'd known what he would be putting up with before he made up his mind to come here.

Curtis brought the mike of the comm closer. "All right, Cass, this is the last time I get to tell you myself, be careful."

Gibson's smile faded slowly and her eyes lost their gleam as she looked up at the circular hotel and slowly back down. "You have my word, Curtis. I swear to you on my shield, I'll do everyth--." Her voice fell off abruptly as her gaze reached the sidewalk. Barely visible in the shadows near the base of the hotel two dark objects, roughly six feet in length lay near a large concrete planter, unmoving and not something that had been on the last infra-red satellite sweep they'd looked at before moving here. "Curtis, hold on. Morris, have we got any of those night vision toys?"

He handed her a pair of binoculars and moved next to her, still mindful to keep in the shadows, following her gaze to the lumps on the ground as she spoke. "Curtis, have these jerks made any sort of threats against the hostages?"

"I haven't had any contact with them along those lines. Buchanan said they'd be calling back with their demands once some agenda of their own was ready. Why?"

"I'm seeing what looks like two bodies on the back side of the building and from the looks of them… the outside elevator is… not in service."

"The schematics don't show an exterior eleva--. Oh."

Gibson handed the binoculars to O'Brian, who was scowling in disapproval as he made some adjustment to them she hadn't known about and touched his comm.

"They're dead and they're wearing fatigues, but they don't match," he offered, sharing a glance of confusion with Gibson that lacked animosity.

Gibson scowled and rolled her eyes. "Since this wasn't a costume party, either our perps have some pretty severe personnel problems or we've got people on our side on the move in there. If we assume Chloe is the one who got the signal out because it was on a CTU frequency, then I'd be willing to bet those guys landed courtesy of… Air Jack." She glanced at the top of the circular building again and shivered and Morris recalled Gibson had a marked distaste for heights.

He dropped the night-vision binoculars back in the bag. "I'm guessing they might have been dead already and, assuming it was Bauer, he was covering his tracks."

Gibson's lips gave a familiar and familial twist. "Yeah, they wouldn't have fallen for that twice…. Oh God, sometimes I really can't help myself ." Gibson looked away from the two bodies and slowly back at the British man, her eyes rolling back in her head slightly. "I'm… sorry… about the water thing. It was an impulse - and sort of… childish."

"Sort of.? Sort of? Are you actually dating Manning or Chloe's paying him to babysit you."

Gibson opened her mouth and snapped it shut. "Fine, okay, fine. I deserved that. I'm sorry…that… it's gonna' be cold in your pants. You're certainly not used to that."

Morris glanced up at her with gritted teeth. "I'm working hard to remember I asked for this. Look, you're forgiven. That's the worst thing I could do to you and if we live through this, it'll be funny then." He focused on her with a sudden sharpness, however, nothing even vaguely reminiscent of humor in his expression, his large eyes dark and cold. "I'll do my part. Don't worry. I'll do the right thing by you and everyone else and I wouldn't be here if I didn't think you'd do the right thing by me."

Gibson said nothing, simply checked her weapons one last time, two silenced automatics, the taser, ammo for both, a black-bladed knife, five sets of cuffs, the back-up comm and a few other odds and ends. The sometimes almost involuntary air of humor was gone. "You have my word, Morris, my word on my shield. Just don't forget, whatever happens, it's your neck now, too."

O'Brian met her gaze without flinching, shouldering the laptop and the batteries in a large satchel, and peeling out a huge length of bundled cable to keep it from unwinding noisily off the reel as they moved. "Well then, let's get moving. You know nothing makes me happier than saving my own ass."

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Nirmala Hassal glanced at his watch. Minutes now and the President of the United States would know what they wanted, another step would be taken. He finished the bottle of water in his hand and tossed it to the floor, stepping over the semi-conscious finance accountant Sukumal had worked over hours ago as he headed toward the male hostages seated on the floor. They had allowed them to loosen their ties and some had shed their suitcoats; food and water were not yet forthcoming but that was far from being a problem yet. He stopped at Buchanan, smiling thinly and lowering himself onto the back of the sofa. "I have news for you. The woman, the one nursing her friend, you'll be sorry to know she followed through, transferred over a hundred million dollars into our accounts to buy her man's safety. My men watched her, entered the account code themselves when she reached the final step."

Buchanan's gaze didn't waver, holding onto the thread of hope that Chloe had managed to do something, had used her skills to fool them, but he did so knowing that she was human; she had her limits and the absolute desperation to spare Jack Bauer any more harm had been raw and deep when she had spoken to him, begged him to help Jack understand. He'd had people betray CTU before and for less understandable reasons. He wasn't sure himself to which extent he would have gone to protect Bauer from any more torment; he wasn't sure now he wouldn't help Chloe if she indeed had.

Hassal frowned after a moment, disappointed by the lack of response on the part of this particular captive. The others were simply staring at each other and the floor. Even if they were angry or disappointed in the woman it was unlikely that they would give him the satisfaction of a reaction. Hassal brushed a hand over his face, smiling at his own foolishness. "You are too good at this, Buchanan. Forgive me for insulting you. I just want to share that her gift to us has paid for a great part of our plan. I am ahead already and you don't even know what my deman--."

The buzz of his walkie-talkie, one that was working inside the bubble of interference, cut him off, "General, General, come in. Come in!" The urgency in the male voice was unmistakable as was the note of alarm. Hassal snapped the device from his belt and snapped to his feet, heading for the doorway concealed in the volcano.

Buchanan looked after him with a sliver of a smile, one that broadened slightly when he looked over at the stout, gray-suited figure of Dominguez. "Be ready," he mouthed, his voice silent. "Something's wrong."

Dominguez nodded as tightly as he could, not sure for what he was supposed to be ready but he had also not missed the tension in the voice of the man who had been called. He had no more time to think about it, however, before Hassal strode back into the function room, flush and moving quickly toward the female hostages. He stopped when he reached the edge of the group; they were huddling back from him, having picked up the sudden anger he was radiating. Hassal pointed at two men standing in the back of the room between the two groups of hostages. "You, two, get Buchanan. He's going with us." He turned as the two men went to the CTU director and dragged him up. They watched him for a clue as to what to do next as Hassal himself reached down and yanked Martha Logan to her feet, her blood-soaked, beaded gown rattling. She said nothing after a small, startled cry of pain and surprise, struggling for a moment with her numb-legged footing as he dragged her with him toward the doors. The men on either side of Buchanan shoved him forward with the butt of their rifles.

Richard Dominguez looked around himself with a sudden feeling of panic. His eyes meeting his wife's across the room. The actions of their so-called general had reanimated the remaining ten armed men who were still in the room. There were still too many to do anything against and they had no idea how many more there might be. Whatever bad turn things had taken, their captors were determined not to make it a one-way deal.

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The room with its electronically sealed door that should have alerted them to intruders was, as they hoped, was empty but not silent. Machinery grumbled to the left and right of Gibson as she moved forward, working under the assumption that if she couldn't hear anyone else in here, then they couldn't hear her either and her gun was already drawn. She was somewhere in the basement of the hotel, near what she believed was a water pump system. A green sign pointed up to the main first floor kitchen that serviced the restaurant and another to the laundry. From the map she had studied, the kitchen was going to be closer to the elevators and the fire stairwells. She weighed her options and headed out through the laundry, through the white-tiled corridors wide enough for two laundry carts to pass, assuming that while a wandering terrorist might take a turn through the kitchen, they were unlikely to opt to wash their clothes. She saw no one and nothing yet that shed any light on what the hell was going on in here and ducked into a fully stocked linen closet to tell O'Brian so, letting the stacks of clothing absorb the sound of her voice. She continued moving quietly through the service area, slowing when the hallway went from tile to carpeting that was a bright, intense shade of blue, knowing she was now closing on areas the public might see.

Gibson pulled her weapon back when she reached the first door out to a public area, easing up to glance out the small window. She still had a tiny bit of hallway to go down but was close enough to see a wedge of the lobby now and the abandoned front desk. From this angle she couldn't see the glass front doors but common sense said that there would be people patrolling their perimeter. Even if they were able to avoid the direct view of the snipers across the street behind the black paint, they would assume their movements could be tracked via infrared equipment through it..

The kitchen and the restaurant were to her left, taking up the better part of the first floor on the west side. On the north and south ends there were fire stairwells; she should be able to reach the one south of her without drawing attention from anyone on the far side if she did so quietly. The large complex of the front desk blocked any clear view across the huge lobby. She watched for a moment more before pushing the door slowly open and entering the corridor leading back to the front desk.

Down the corridor away from the lobby there were administrative offices that were unfinished; ladders, buckets of paint, chemicals and apologetic and upbeat signs about "final touches" cluttered the pathway. Going in the other direction she could now see a wider wedge of the lobby which grew as she edged forward, the silenced pistol held ready. She saw the first man as she reached the edge of the corridor, wearing black and gray fatigues and smoking a cigarette. He was on his feet and walking lazily around the potted plants against the far wall and in front of the doorway leading up to the stairwell on the north side.

"Morris, I've spotted the first one. They're Central Eastern, it looks like; they're not wearing any particular uniform. This one's wearing urban camouflage. He's armed with an assault rifle, a knife, a pistol and he's carrying a walkie-talkie, so they have communications functioning inside. He's guarding the north stairwell in the lobby."

"Got it. Any ordnance?"

"What? Oh. Not that I can see. No vest, no grenades, and he's also smoking so I'd guess not. Maybe he throws like a girl." Gibson smirked when heard Morris's stifled, involuntary snort of laughter. Well, if nothing else she'd never fail him for having a not having a sense of humor, sometimes even when the jokes had been directed at him. Amusement over, she backed away and trained her attention south, quickly looking up at the curving stairway that went up to the next few levels, artfully carpeted to look like a waterfall. Another man was at the top of the stairs, sitting on them sideways so that he could see down into the lobby and up onto the level where the stairs led; he was smoking as well, something exotic but not illegal as far as her experienced nose could tell. Four sets of double doors and two elevators were behind him. She called him in to O'Brian and dropped to her knees to think. Time it wrong and he could see her when she headed for the south fire stairwell. Gibson took a deep breath she appreciated all the more as she watched the man above her vantage point smoke, smiling as she watched him do so with slow, deliberate movements, thanks to which his left hand, at regular intervals, blocked his view.

She moved two drags later, as his hand was going from his upraised knee to his mustached mouth, ducking in his clear sight around the potted ferns at the end of the hallway and behind the massive, carpeted set of stairs. A free-standing feature underneath of which she had plenty of room to hide, they served to provide her cover until she was ready. They served the purpose for only seconds, however; the next time the guard turned she was on her feet and facing him, weapon in hand. She fired and rushed him in the same moment, charging in to silence him before he cried out, reacting to the brutal charge of electricity that had coursed through his body and dropped him shaking to the ground.

Gibson felt the sweat chill her back as she dragged her victim out of the stairwell and into an alcove behind the Dasani and Pepsi machines, using her knife to cut the sleeves off his fatigues, gagging him with one and binding his wrists tightly with the other. She looked to make sure he was out of contact with either machine, then reloaded the taser and shot him again, this time point blank in the back of the neck. Chalk another dark mark on the board for Morris. Wondering if the man she'd tasered twice now would even live, she headed back up the stairwell, letting Morris know that there was now one less to confront when the time came.

Moving lightly, she turned the corner to go up the stairs and fired at the fatigue-clothed she saw the figure there.

It didn't move to acknowledge her or defend itself, however but simply fell over, the crunch of what sounded like glass reaching her ears as it did so, followed next by the sound of glass rolling on the concrete. The neck and shoulders of a bottle clattered over the first step and tinkled to halt next to the emergency lights. Gibson's eyes went back to the motionless form in urban fatigues, locked on him as she moved up the stairs. He was dead, but protocol was that there was the chance he was booby-trapped. She looked at the pool of blood around him and got a whiff of wine then pulled the flashlight out of her leg pocket and waved it at his face. It was white with death but mottled with the postmortem congealment of a massive amount of blood..

Cassie grimaced and flicked the light across the blankly staring eyes. Beneath them his nose was an indistinguishable mass of shredded flesh and raw bone, his jaw was broken and hanging. She'd seen worse, drug hits on people whose faces had been blow off and their fingers removed, murders by gang initiates, it was the realization of who had done it that relieved her and sent chills through her at the same time.

Curtis had used his clearance to show her who was being held in here, which agencies they were from as far as the security people – not just the politicians. Those here from the DOD and Homeland and the FBI were bureaucrats and accountants, there to press the financial needs of their agencies. Jack and Chloe had been invited as novelties, the pair brought Charles Logan to his knees. Bill Buchanan was there to do the actual negotiating and it was unlikely he would have been with Chloe to get a signal like the one that had tipped them off. Out of all the people that were in this building, that were in any represented agency, only one of them was a field agent in any recent time frame. Only one of them would have had the training to do the damage to the man in front of her. Jack.

In a tone that somehow carried relief, regret, and worry, Gibson touched the comm again as she moved past the body up the next flight of stairs. "Morris, they're down one more."

"You know, you're not supposed to be turning off your comm and shooting your way through there!"

"I didn't kill him, you idiot, but I'm damn sure Jack did."

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They hesitated in the stairwell of the 15th floor, knowing that the floor below was the one where the hostages were being held, where they had escaped from twice. O'Brian gripped the railing in her hand until there was pain in her fingers, then her wrist, then her arm, pain that her legs sympathized with after their repeated flight back down from the penthouse. Jack stood on the step beneath her, listening, the stolen weapon pointed at the doorway beneath them as he listened carefully, struggling to hear past the low hiss of Chloe's breathing. He eased down the concrete stairs silently, fighting his own fatigue and prepared to fire at the slightest movement of the door toward them. Bauer ducked down past the window in the doorway, and straightened slowly, glancing sideways out of the wire-crossed glass, the long lines of his face deepening for a moment. He waved Chloe down and she obeyed, a gun also in her grip. She moved quickly, ignoring the pain that also radiated up from her bare feet. She hunched over and joined him on the other side of the door.

"Why did you stop?"

"Just trying to see if there's anything we can learn. I can see one of them outside the function room, nothing else. Let's keep moving. Get ready. We won't be able to avoid them much longer. We're gonna' head for the service corridor on the first floor. There was still work being done there."

O'Brian merely nodded and kept her eyes down, concentrating simply on keeping herself moving as they skirted down the stairs and repeated the maneuver they had done so many times, exiting out of the doorway on the twelfth floor and heading across the width of the hotel to the stairwell on the opposite side. Bauer had decided on the strategy on the theory that it was far less likely they would be seeking them, once they started looking, on individual floors.

Being unable avoid their captors, however, came far sooner than Bauer thought. At the sound of booted feet before them Jack and Chloe broke into a run, heading back for the stairwell they had just abandoned. They outpaced the sound of the pursuit but only by seconds. Jack's free hand snapped out just before they reached the fire door, pulling Chloe to a stop. Assuming his intent, she braced her weapon before her and stood her ground at his side, waiting for the others to appear and hoping they had enough firepower. He had seconds, no more, not enough for him to explain, but simply hope their trust would once again carry them through. Bauer took a step back and opened the door, grabbing O'Brian's arm and thrusting her through the opening. "Keep going. I'll hold them off. Go! Now!"

Her first instinct, of course, was to argue, to dismiss the sudden change of plans Bauer was forcing upon her, insisting on their separation. She glanced down the hallway, empty now but only for moments more, then back up into the intense blue eyes now inches from her own. "I don't want to leave you."

"… and I don't want to do this without you but, this is bigger than us, Chloe. We have to take every chance we can. We're just staggering our escape. We leave here together or not at all."

The tears came easily but she knew he was right, and of course, she trusted him. He wasn't about to sacrifice himself if he could help it. He was planning on joining her if he could… and more than anyone else, she knew what he could do. They took the last moment they had to share a fleeting kiss and then she withdrew, vanishing back through the door and rushing down the stairs. Bauer turned back, his heart beginning to pound as the footsteps grew closer, then oddly slowed. He could tell at that moment that one set of them was not coming from a set of boots, but even on the carpeting were sharper and briefer.

He had an answer a moment later and his weapon thumped to the floor as two of the three men surrounded him, searching him roughly as he stared at the gun pointed at Martha Logan's head. Her spike heeled shoes had been the source of the out of place footsteps.

Nirmala Hassal sighed and lowered the gun from the head of the tall, blond woman he held by the throat. "This time, Mr. Bauer, there's going to be a price." He waved his gun hand at the man to his right. "Find his woman. Enjoy yourself with her. Kill her. Take your time and clean yourself before you come back." Jack twisted in the grasp of the two men holding him, barely able to still himself even as the gun returned to the side of Martha Logan's head. "One more move and you'll be responsible for the deaths of them both. Even once my plans are in motion, Mr. Bauer, I'll still have time. Don't worry about missing the your woman for long, you'll be joining her when I've tired of your screaming."

Paralyzed by the gun still pointed at Martha's head, Jack Bauer stood frozen, doing the only thing he could still do: trust Chloe O'Brian. It was all he was left with as the man to his left released him and followed the path of her escape.

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Chloe O'Brian was slowed as she made her way down the corridor by the process of gripping each door handle and hoping that she would eventually encounter one of the rooms left open as the guests had been rounded up, what few of them there had been. She was nearly across the building when the sound of pursuit reached her, of booted feet thudding down the hallway. She backed into the nearest short corridor, huddled in the darkness and waiting for the man to appear. He should be assuming she was armed given the fact that the absence of the men who had been holding them in the penthouse had probably tipped them off.

Out of her sight, the footfalls stopped then his voice echoed down the hallway. "Get out here, Woman. Turn yourself in and Hassal will let you and your man die together."

She scowled and directed the gun in the direction of the voice, only in the confusion of echoes she couldn't tell the exact direction. She pointed it back the way she had come and knelt down with a frustrated sense of déjà vu. At least this time she only had to guard herself, Jack was already a prisoner, again, and he was counting on her to get out of here. The realization steadied her hand as the man pursuing her came into view, and spotted her at the same time.

He fired two shots clearly meant to miss her but scare her and he succeeded. She leapt back slightly but returned fire, sending a half-dozen shots down the hallway before she heard the man suddenly scream, wordlessly at first and then he uttered a stream of pained curses. She lowered her weapon and stepped forward, heading toward the crumpled figure on the floor. If he wasn't disabled enough already, she intended to shoot him, not to kill, but to remove him permanently from the action. She approached the groaning figure curled in on himself on the deep blue carpet, biting her lip as she lowered her aim and steeled herself to shoot the man before her in the knee.

The hand that snatched her bare ankle caught her entirely by surprise, but the fact that she hadn't seen a drop of blood occurred to her before she hit the floor, trying to shift her aim even as she dropped. The man she'd been determined to take permanently out of action moments before, however, had anticipated her move and backhanded the weapon out of her hand as he came to his knees. O'Brian screamed as the blow knocked the gun from her clenched fingers and kicked with her free leg, her bare foot ineffectively striking the dark man in the face. He let the kick carry her over onto her stomach and she screamed as he landed on top her, pinning her arms and dragging her up, then slamming her head against the wall and ripping open the zippered back of her dress. She screamed again when his hand raked down her back and then reached forward, along her ribs, then roughly seized her right breast.

It took several seconds after she hit the floor again for Chloe to realize she was free of her captor; dazed and struggling to shake off the multiple shocks of the last several seconds, terrified of what might be next, she struggled to get her legs back under her to stand and face it. To her left, she could see only a blur of fast movements and heard the sound of blows being rapidly exchanged. Chloe pulled herself up onto her hands and knees, scrabbling away from the sounds of the struggle, shaking her head to clear it as she searched for the weapon she'd lost, relieved and grateful that Jack had freed himself so quickly. She was reaching for her weapon when the combatants suddenly landed next to her on the floor and she heard a deafening, intense, unmistakably stomach-turning crack. Her attacker cried out again, only this time in defeaning, sheer, and genuine agony. O'Brian threw herself clear and into the wall again; grunting, and opened her eyes to the next shock.

Chloe scrambled back and onto her feet, then grabbed her weapon as the struggle came to an end and the man who had been very likely about to rape her collapsed completely onto the blood-soaked carpet, his left arm bending at an obscene angle, wrenched in entirely the wrong direction at the elbow and twisted beneath his waist. He was gagging on the blood coursing down the side of his face until he lost consciousness seconds later. He slumped off of the broken limb and for a half-second she saw the ragged white fragment of bone before the blood of a severed artery began to pulse violently over it. O'Brian let the gun drop to the floor again, choking on bile for a moment, then staring through the sting up tears at the soon to be bruised but far less bloodied face of her sister.

Cassie staggered as Chloe leapt into her arms, sobbing and shaking but pushing herself away an instant later, "They have Jack."

Gibson took hold off her sister's tear-stained face, forcing distance between them, and then forcing herself to feel nothing but the moment. "Where? How many of them?"

"I don't know. I never saw them. It didn't sound like more than three or four."

"Where!?"

"Back up the stairs. I didn't want to leave him but he told me …. He was armed… but, but that creep…. Jack wasn't…. Oh, God. Mom's going to kill me, but you have to…! You have to--."

"Stow it, Monkey-butt. Let's go." Gibson turned her back on her sister and headed for the doorway, her hand raised to her ear. "Tell Curtis this has gone hot. We'll try and keep it contained." She didn't bother to hide the sound of her approach to the doorway to the floor above, glancing back only to see that her sister, in a dress that had been reduced to rags was following. They slid out through the door at the top of the first landing, however, and stood listening, hearing the fading sound of rapid footsteps.

Moving forward, Gibson saw with relief that there were only two of them, one with a gun on Jack and another with a grip on a tall, blond woman in a white gown directly before him, a gun pointed under her chin. "I see blood. Is Jack okay to fight?"

"Yeah, I think so, but can't you just shoot them?"

"Honey, I need control of that guy's arm as soon as I hit him. I can't let him fire." She flipped a smile at her smaller sibling and raised a hand to her face, her voice suddenly dropping. "Morris, tell Curtis I can get Jack and an unknown female hostage. We'll use their information." With that Gibson raised each foot in turn, quickly removing her shoes. She glanced at her sister, a finger at her lips and began to move down the corridor, her sidelong steps long and silent. After staring for a moment, Chloe followed at a distance, her weapon raised.

Gibson leapt onto the man holding the gun under the blond woman's neck, knocking his arm out from under her chin the instant before any other part of her connected with him. Jack moved the moment the three people beside him struck the ground, the elbow of his injured arm jackknifing into the ribs of the man holding him and driving him back against the paneled wall. They struggled for the gun as the figures beside him scrambled on the floor but Bauer was the superior combatant even fighting a concussion and the wound. He caught his former captor by the throat and drove the opposite fist three times into the man's gut, too close for him to block the blows. Bauer threw him to the floor face first then flipped him around with the hand twisting his thumb and wrist, snapping one of them the process. Once he was face up, Bauer drove his heel powerfully into the man's crotch. He went fetal, cursing, blood flying from his lips onto the dark blue carpet. He cried out again when Jack took the gun that had been pressed against his own back moments ago and fired a precision shot into the downed man's left knee.

Jack turned to help Chloe and Martha Logan and jerked back when he saw the end of the struggle that had taken place to his left. Martha Logan was now holding the gun that had been under her chin, pointing it unwaveringly at the leader of the men who had been holding them, her expression pure and barely contained rage. Behind him and cuffing him, her soon-to-be-bruised face covered in sweat, Cassie Gibson offered Jack Bauer a lopsided smile and kicked the bound man to his knees. She stepped past him and they shared a quick kiss on the cheek. A moment later, pale as a ghost, Chloe appeared and Gibson backed up, glancing at her sister as Chloe, dull-eyed, stared up at her sister and returned her disposed of shoes. She ruffled her smaller sibling already messed up hair but turned to Bauer. "Aside from the arm, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Cass." He pointed behind her then moved her in the same direction, taking the gun from the tall blond woman who had been beside him. "This is… uh… this is Martha Logan, the Former First Lady."

"Yeah, Jack, I kinda' know who she is. Now. Uh, hi, God, I'm sorry." She blushed under the bruises. "I'm Detective Gibson, LAPD, Vice 77th Precinct, on loan to CTU. Um, damn, are you injured?"

Logan smiled and shook her head. "The blood is someone else's and I'd guessed who you were, Detective. Thank you."

Jack glared at the man who had been in charge of their captivity, dragging him to his feet between the two women. "This is over, you bastard."

Gibson, blushing more in the wake of Logan's recognition, slid back into her shoes and retied them. She took a huffing breath and glanced down slightly at Jack Bauer. "Uh, Kiddo, … we truly need to talk."

"Yeah. How the hell did you find us?"

Gibson's lip vanished between her teeth and her eyes went from his face to the floor to her sister and back. "I heard gunfire and ran toward it. Generally not a clever response… but we get to be different. One of these people was attacking Chloe. I… I killed him."

"Are you sure?"

"I shattered his elbow to the point that he's bled out by now." Her words were suddenly clipped and distant, the tone of someone working hard to divorce themselves from an inescapable situation, bearing perhaps even a distant edge of shock.

Bauer gave her a look of pity and knew instantly she'd killed him with her own hands. "These aren't street perps, Cass, and they're on a suicide mission. They will do anything to anyone in the way and they came here expecting to die. It's our job to stop them from taking anyone else with them. Now, listen to me; you found us, where are the others moving in? Where is everybody?"

In the space of a few words, Bauer had reached her for the moment, and only a few seconds passed before Gibson returned to herself and the immediacy of the situation that only she knew. She glanced at the man she'd attacked and nodded at the former First Lady. "Ma'am, are you all right to cover him?"

"I'd be better if you told me just to shoot him." Logan replied, truculent and scowling as she retook the weapon Jack offered and pointed it at the cuffed man with a smile, leaning down to his eye level. "Try me. Please. Really."

Gibson stared at the Former First Lady openly for a moment, then swallowed and directed Bauer and her sister out of their captive's earshot down the hallway, removing the comm as she did so. "First thing's first; we think this building is wired with explosives. There are gaps in the structure that the ordnance people have said would be at the right places to make this building a huge firebomb, and as for what you actually asked… there's kind of a … situation. Jack, for right now, I… am… everybody."

Bauer stared at her in disbelief he could barely contain behind suddenly gritted teeth. "What?!"

In response, the woman only glared at the wall, "Somebody made clear I was the only person he would get in here."

Jack's face went from shock and confusion as Chloe's went from suspicion to suspicion on the verge of rage, held back only by a final confirmation she knew was about to come. "Oh, my God. That wasn't just any "Morris" you were talking to, was it?"

That her suspicion was justified burned through her in the moments that followed when in reply, Cassandra Gibson looked away and, for one of the few times in her life, stood silent, well aware there was nothing she could say to make the situation different and absolutely nothing that would make it better. Chloe heard none of the rest of their conversation as Jack Bauer and her sister traded what information they each could offer, Gibson returning the comm to her ear to share it with Morris once they were done. Chloe watched her do so with a look of pure venom, wanting for all the world to put the field comm in her own ear and demand to know from Morris O'Brian just what the Hell he thought he was doing.


	9. Chapter 9

Nirmala Hassal twisted his hands, allowing himself a small show of discomfort

Nirmala Hassal twisted his hands, allowing himself a small show of discomfort. The woman had put the handcuffs on intentionally tight and probably done damage to his right hand when she'd grabbed it to remove the threat it presented to the former First Lady. He could no longer feel his fingers and they were slow to obey him. Regardless, Hassal said nothing and remained still, except for a half-smile he offered to Martha Logan over the barrel of the gun she was pointing at his face with an expression that told him there was no point testing her. He wouldn't; he would play out his time. Disposing with a few of his men and capturing him for now did not mean things were, as Bauer had labeled them, "over". His men still controlled the building. His communication lines to Bhakti were still intact and Bhakti would start putting pressure on them to find him. A lone woman, of all things, was all he had seen in terms of an incursion for now and she wasn't going to waste her time tracing the connections to their main base of operation. Besides which a long enough silence would also be the signal to release the toxin, a failsafe that would engage if none of them survived to give the order. However it played out, the Americans would pay for backing Tyandakar. The woman's mission was probably to simply gather information and bring it back out. As a woman might, however, she had abandoned it for the sake of saving the smaller woman from Janavi.

Hassal studied them again as the three stood together, trading information just out of his earshot as Martha Logan stood over him wearing a tight smile that twisted up one side of her mouth, probably wishing he would give her an excuse to fire. The two women with Bauer had nearly the same color hair and though he couldn't tell from here, their complexions were near the same, at least what he could see of the taller woman's where her face wasn't starting to bruise. Their bodies had the same general build outside of the difference in height and they were standing very closely together. When the taller woman momentarily slipped an arm around the other one, his suspicions were all but confirmed; the two women were related, sisters probably. The guess was of no use to him yet but the time would come; he was sure about that also. Hassal kept his expression calm but scanned the three people when they broke from what was obviously an intense meeting and approached him, Bauer taking point as they prepared to begin moving. Logan and O'Brian moved in behind him, armed now with weapons taken off his dead or injured men. Hassal grunted as Gibson shoved the gun in his back and dragged him up off the ground to take up the rear. He hissed and staggered, turning to glare at her. "Get your hands off me, Woman. When my men find us, you are going to make all of them very--."

"Shut up, Swine! … and don't worry, I'm more of a man than you are, especially since terrorists are a favorite prison girlfriend."

Morris growled in her ear as she shoved the dark-skinned man forward. "Damn it, Cassie. How about you don't piss off the terrorist until we have all of them?"

Gibson scowled to herself and kept moving, forcing the man before her forward then holding him back as they approached the stairs to prevent any attempt to attack Martha Logan and send her tumbling down them. As they moved, she glanced back behind them sporadically, but kept herself close enough to also prevent her captive from falling back to trip her.

Hoping that the man Gibson had attacked on the lower floor was yet undiscovered, Bauer led the way down the southern stairwell, glancing back and forth to keep track of those in his wake. The unsettling sight of Martha Logan armed and in her bloodstained gown still caused him a half-second's pause each time he did. He stopped at the stairwell on the third floor and herded her into the corner with Chloe as the man who had been their captor came down the stairs. Hassal jerked to a stop, glowering and silent, his angry gaze focused on Chloe with special intensity before Bauer took hold of him and placed the gun at the back of his neck, using him for a human shield as they edged nearer the door. Chloe O'Brian's face twitched as she watched her sister move into position down on the steps parallel to the door as the man eased it open at Bauer's command.

There was a voice as soon as he did, a slightly surprised question from the man Gibson had seen at the top of the stairs. He got only a few words out before their captive yelled a warning that came too late. Bauer snapped the silenced pistol from the back of his captive's neck to just under his ear. It hissed and bucked slightly as he fired. The stairway guard dropped to the ground, clutching his throat, silenced himself by the gagging force of the blood that now flowed down into his lungs past his shattered vocal cords and trachea. Bauer shoved his captive out onto the landing of the third floor, before the grand stairway that led to the lobby, only now the top of the stairway was unguarded. Gibson emerged behind the two men, watching her sister and the former First Lady slip out behind her. "Jack, there was another one across the lobby, guarding the north door and elevator. They're staying away from the front. I'm sure they've figured we've got snipers covering ground level at the lobby."

Bauer nodded and suddenly kicked the man in his grip to his knees. "Cover him, I'll be back."

She didn't ask where he was going, merely traded a look with her sister and leveled her gun at the man on the ground. Not far behind him but with her gun still in reach, Martha Logan sat down on the carpeted floor, looking weary beyond words yet relaxed, happy with where she was as opposed to still being a hostage. Chloe knelt down next to her for a moment. "We'll get out of this, Martha. Jack's gotten out of worse stuff and we're almost to the doors. We just have to figure out how to get out of them and get the teams in here."

"You do what you have to, Chloe, you and Jack. I know what the two of you are together and you're not to protect me. I'm no better than any of you."

Chloe put an arm around the other woman for a moment and then moved away, covering their captive from the opposite side of her sister with her own gun. She was silent for a moment and then the brief pause got the better of her, "Cassie, why, why did … You-Know-Who… get you in here?" She glared at the kneeling captive, still wary of revealing the name of an informant before him when they were still in a situation where their fortunes could be reversed at any moment. She knew her sister well enough that she would have the same caution.

Cassie shook her head, never taking her eyes off of the man on his knees. "Not now, Mon – Chlo', not now. It's… complicated."

O'Brian relented unhappily. Great. Jack was hurt. They were maybe still seconds or minutes away from being dead or hostages again in a building that was going to blow up if they didn't get bomb squads in here in time… and Morris was involved… and had decided to "help" by playing with her sister's life. If she had to die tonight, at least she could have had the satisfaction of finding out what the hell was going on but she had the suspicion that once again Morris had been offered a fast buck and taken it. "At least tell me if he's back at CTU," she finally demanded.

Gibson shook her head, reaching up and taking the band out of her hair so that it fell down on either side of her face in thick, straight strands. "He's not," she replied and then jerked her chin to focus her sister's attention on her face, making furtive eye contact with her only as she watched the kneeling man. Silently, exaggerating the pronunciation, she mouthed the answer slowly, "He's right outside."

Chloe's eyes bugged for a moment, then her expression contorted with confusion. Morris had put himself in as much danger as any of them; that made as much sense as his sending her sister in here alone. She had a thousand more questions but let them all go as Jack returned from the hallway behind them. "Cassie, cover me." The detective sighed and followed Bauer as he headed toward the grand stairway and its artistically mapped out carpeting, flicking his arm so that the rifle he had taken off of one of their now dead captors came down in a silken move into his hands. He tested the load and the action then took off the safety.

The lobby was still as empty as Gibson remembered it and she saw with amazement what she hadn't when coming in through the laundry, the artscape of an ancient world map laid out in on dense nylon carpet of the lobby, a map she could see in its entirety from here. Before it could distract her for more than a moment, she went to the other side of the stairway and began descending, her weapon covering the east side. She stopped when Bauer did, momentarily watching him crouch down on the stairway then take aim at the man across the lobby. He fired and grunted as the jerk of the recoil traveled down his injured arm. The target dropped so quickly, without even reaching for his throat after his head snapped back, that Gibson had no doubt he was dead before he hit the ground.

Jack glanced over at the detective as the man across the lobby took his final breath a few hundred yards away, jerking his head upward and leading the way as they returned to the others. Martha Logan was on her feet, some of the color back in her face. "Is the lobby clear? Can we get out of here now?"

Bauer's gaze dropped to the ground for a moment but he shook his head even as he lifted it. "I'm afraid not, Mrs. Lo--."

"Damn it, Jack, Martha," she snapped, a bit more of her color returning.

"Martha. If we go down there now, we might get out, but I think there's a much better chance for everyone if we leave them as bait."

The three women looked at him then, over the head of the handcuffed man who had gone from expressionless to suddenly and definitively unhappy. It was Logan who spoke, finally, putting together quickly, for someone untrained at this sort of thing, what he was implying, "You mean, they'll have expected us to escape."

"Exactly, once they start looking and find the bodies here I want them to think we've left. The doors aren't bulletproof. The only thing holding CTU back from shooting through them is not endangering the hostages. It would take too long to find them in here or reach the floor where we were held; they'd have plenty of time to kill them and they know the building's wired to blow." The man on the ground looked up sharply at that and Jack offered him a cold ghost of a smile. "We weren't sure of that till now. Thanks for the confirmation, Jackass. Excuse me, Martha."

"You call that damn jackass anything you want, Sweetie. So what do we do now?"

"I still might be able to get you out."

"I wouldn't try that now anyway, Jack", Gibson interjected. "When we figured out it was this building where something was wrong, we sent in two uniforms to look things over and according the satellite scan… they're dead now not far outside those doors. Safe bet is they're watching as much of the exterior as they can in case of teams coming in."

Jack nodded slowly. "… and then they'll kill the hostages and detonate the explosives."

Martha looked down at the lobby but her trembling chin lifted and her eyes hardened. "Don't worry about it, Jack. I haven't told you; there didn't seem to be time till now but they took Bill Buchanan as a hostage to drag around when they took me. I will not endanger anyone else just because of who I am. If you aren't asking Chloe you aren't asking me. She's not trained for this sort of thing either." Chloe's eyes darted to Bauer as the words left the former First Lady's mouth, even if she wasn't a field agent she understood basic tactics and how the men upstairs who had taken Jack and been free to come after Chloe because of it. Jack had been faced with the chance that she still might escape versus letting Martha Logan die. She wondered if she could ever convince him that he'd done the right thing. Realizing she might have sounded callous, Logan's gaze turned suddenly to Gibson. "No offense, Detective, but you seem to know what you're doing."

"None taken, Ma'am, I chose to be here…and thank you."

For a split second, Jack Bauer stared at the oddity of a quiescent and respectful Cassandra Gibson, stifling a smile and recalling how she had bolted from meeting Logan months ago, then he took a step closer to the former First Lady and met the intense blue eyes just above his own. "Are you sure about this?"

"We're wasting time, Sweetie."

Instead of lifting because of her absolute willingness, the weight of Logan's decision fell on his shoulders even more heavily. She was trusting him with her life but he had trusted her with his when it was entirely upon her to betray Charles Logan. "All right. All right." He backed up a step and pulled Gibson with him. "Tell Morris we're going back in but first we're shooting out the front doors. They should still keep the tac teams back… until they get a signal from us."

"What if he can get a few more people in the back? He was working on that when he got me in here. Curtis was having a geek squad come in from Cal-Tech to help him."

"Why not CTU personnel?"

"Kiddo, that's a… long story about which I have a very short temper. If we can get more personnel in here under the radar--."

"They can go ahead with that. There's something else going on besides what's happening in this building. Blowing up a hotel and some politicians doesn't warrant this kind of planning. They've spent millions, been at this for years."

Cassie nodded and followed him, watching as he used the silenced pistol to shoot the glass near the hinges of one of the front doors. The safety glass, sprayed with paint when the men had entered, collapsed into what looked like a heap of black diamonds. Jack led the way back to the other two women, then frowned and looked away for a moment, taking a quick breath as he hauled their captive to his feet. Chloe smiled up at the blond man nervously, "What are we doing?"

Bauer looked down at her, wanting nothing more than to shoot the man before him in the back of the head, go out the shot open front door, then go home and fall asleep in her arms. "First we get some information, and then… we're going hunting."

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Curtis Manning pulled comm out of his ear with a muted sigh. Buchanan hadn't called with the demands of whomever was in there. The President was demanding answers. Cassie had gone off-mission to save Chloe but it had put her in a position where she was now with Jack, a high-profile captive, and to his shock and added frustration, Martha Logan. He scowled and swore to himself that any time that Buchanan was out of town, he would make sure he was as well. He'd rather be out with the tac teams under fire than inside the Mobile Command Unit with the White House, the DOD, and Homeland Security all calling for updates. He came to his feet and put the earpiece back into place and turned just in time to see a tall, solidly built man with a military fuzz of blond hair climbing up the stairs. He was wearing a white shirt and a matching navy suitcoat and trousers but no tie. There was a slight drawl to his voice when he spoke, a pragmatism even in the face of what Manning knew must be painful circumstances for him.

"Mr. Manning, it's been a good while since we last spoke. I'm Aaron Pierce. I'm sorry I couldn't get here sooner. I had to drive in from Burbank and this mess has the back roads leading in here snarled up, too."

Manning stepped forward, his hand extended. "Of course. I'd be glad to have your help. I know you've just learned Martha Logan is amongst those people in the building, but you may be glad to know she's with Jack Bauer, along with Chloe O'Brian and an LAPD liaison. They've escaped custody and I've just been told they're going to try and lay the foundation for us to get in there. I do also have to tell you we suspect the building has been wired with explosives."

To an outsider of their profession, Pierce's expression would have seemed not to have changed but Manning could tell that he was taking in the information, processing it, and reacting at a level out of reach to someone less experienced. The best way he knew how to handle it was to undo the perpetrators as he had been trained and let the rest take him later. "How close are you to confirming that?"

"No way to know. We'll have to get inside, but there are gaps in the infrastructure that our ordnance teams have theorized are located to maximize the forces of both incendiary and explosive charges. They filed false blueprints but we got hold of the real ones."

Aaron glanced at the images on the monitors all around them, covering all four sides of the building, two long-range views from circling helicopters, and views from every traffic camera in the relevant areas. "If those gaps have been designed into that building then the people who've taken control of it are part of something much larger than what we're seeing here."

Curtis nodded slowly. "I've been suspecting the same thing. Our people inside haven't been able to do much to confirm it but Jack is planning on moving things to another level."

Pierce frowned, then nodded. "I know Jack. If anyone can make this come out right, it'll be him. All right, what can I do to help?"

"You know how the White House works, what kind of noises they want to hear when there aren't any. Can I ask you to keep Gardner updated? I want to focus on what we have that's actionable as soon as we have it."

"I'll do that. Tell me what you know now so I don't repeat myself to them. Nothing makes them more unhappy than hearing what they already know."

"The only information we have right now is that the most likely country of origin for these people is place called Kajananphur. There were two characters from a minor dialect there used by, we're assuming Chloe and Jack, to transmit the S.O.S. I understand we don't have relations with them since the uprising but that a number of their people, students and a few businessmen never returned home from here after the revolution. It looks like, if it's them, they found a way to get us back for backing Tyandakar using patriated national. We still don't know what they want yet. I expected Bill Buchanan to call before we managed to start getting reconnaissance data out of there."

"How are we getting any information? I thought whoever has taken control of the hotel had blocked communications?"

"We've arranged for a hardwire connection that runs inside the perimeter of the interference."

"Then you got someone close enough? I heard there were two dead police officers already."

"We have a private source giving us information on the basis of anonymity. I can't say any more."

Pierce's expression darkened slightly as the two men sat down again at the communications console, oblivious to the hum of voices and machines around them. "All right. I'll rely on your judgment for that. Just give me a comm and I'll get started."

Curtis handed him a spare comm from the shelf that was above his head to his left and the former Secret Service agent slipped it into his ear. Just as he finished a tall, slender, thin-lipped Hispanic man in jeans and a gray shirt stepped up into the back of the MCU and nodded at both of them. "I have some news."

Curtis turned in his seat. "I hope it's good. Aaron, this is Enrique Alvarez with the LAPD, Enrique, this is Aaron Pierce, formerly with the Secret Service; he's lending us a hand. What've you got?"

"Those locations we were dispatched to check, the construction office in Fullerton and the one here in L.A., both of them are empty. We woke up a few of the owners of the businesses nearby and they said it was all done in the past two days. The places were gutted by two teams of itinerate workers, we're guessing illegals but we're still following up. If they were illegal, they'll just vanish. They won't talk even if we found them, not if they think it involves all this."

Curtis frowned. "Don't worry too much about finding them, Rick. The people we're dealing with would just as likely have let them finish and then killed them, no witnesses. You might want to start by just asking about missing persons and the families might open up. Stripping two whole businesses down to the rafters in a matter of days would have required too much public exposure, too much suspicion… and they wouldn't have killed them anywhere near the place where they did the work."

Alvarez's eyes slowly became hooded, his cheeks twitched once as his mouth tightened, "The other business owners in Orange County still need to be questioned. If you want a familiar face there I could go… down to Fullerton and… lead the investigation. That was were this source you spoke about did his actual work, right?"

Curtis took a slow breath, tempted and considering, but looked again at the downcast face framed by the blue and red lights still flashing outside the door of the MCU. "No, I'm sure the people you have there will be fine. I think you can help the best by staying close. Check out the ones in L.A. and then come back. Consider your self deputized to Federal Service."

A look of relief came over the tall man's face, relief and gratitude. "Thank you, Mr. Manning."

Curtis nodded and watched him go, turning toward Pierce when he spoke, his voice dour. "That man seemed distracted."

Manning shook his head slightly. "He's motivated; his partner's the one inside." Curtis reflected a moment on the information Enrique had brought them. One more source of information had been eliminated, not that he expected it to have provided much. There would, however, be a lot of unhappy business owners from the neighboring offices in interrogation rooms over the next few hours, that was certain. It was one of the few things that was.

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Bill Buchanan grunted as he was released, the man behind him shoving him back toward the now familiar clutch of male hostages seated on the floor of the function room. He said nothing, merely took his place on the floor again. He directed a sharp and demanding gaze at Richard Dominguez as he sat down, his question obvious: had they had him call the President? While Buchanan was still blocking their view as he eased onto the floor, the Speaker of the House quickly shook his head "no" and very slightly shrugged. Buchanan seated himself to face the rest of the room and gave it a slow careful perusal. The guards number only nine now, still too many and still focusing their presence on the women, exerting a factor of control over the men as well by doing so. A few of the women were holding other women as they rested. There were no more bodies to be seen than had been around before his unwanted tour of the Cerulean Cove.

The thing that stood out for him most, however, was an absence: Nirmala Hassal was nowhere to be seen and it had been nearly 45 minutes that he'd been force-marched through the blue carpeted, wood-paneled corridors in search of, he assumed, Chloe and Jack. Whatever had gone wrong, he was certain, had to do with them but his captors had been wordless throughout the search. Buchanan allowed himself a bit of hope and relief. Hassal was a man who liked to show off his accomplishments, his version of humor, even what he considered his "humanity". He was here for a cause he believed just, had achieved a position of power inside its personnel structure probably a bit too quickly going by his age, and that made him arrogant. If he had found Jack or Chloe and killed either of them, their bodies would have been with the others, stacked like the trophy mice of a housecat before the others, especially him. He also had the relief of knowing that whatever had happened to cause the disturbance, he could now be reasonably sure that Chloe had not done as he had feared and turned on them to save Jack. There was one more worry left, however, Martha Logan was still missing.

Whatever was going on he had even more cause to wonder as the huge man who seemed to be Hassal's right hand suddenly walked back in the door and searched the room himself with some urgency, then pulled aside one of the men, this one wearing desert camouflage. They spoke quickly and quietly and some of the intensity faded from the huge, bald man's frame. He sent the smaller man back to his post guarding the women and stood on his own for several seconds, his expression of irritation faded slowly over the next minute or so, replaced by one of self assurance and quiet calculation.

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They didn't go far once they were moving again, less than a quarter of the way around the circumference of the Cerulean Cove headed west, going in the direction Jack Bauer had gone and returned from moments ago. Their captive in hand, Jack led the way as they went into a room with a door that stood open and waiting. It was one of the lower floor suites; two queen beds were inside, one of them unmade, not only unmade but with the fitted sheet torn off one corner and a two foot long gash cut into the mattress ticking and foam beneath. There was clothing on the floor and an open suitcase on the bed. There was a desk but no chair before it. LAX was visible through the open window but was now nothing more than an immense parking lot. Homeland Security had followed CTU's suggestion and shut down all but emergency flights. Gibson wondered absently if the human heart she had barked at the junior officer for calling to ask about had reached its recipient.

Chloe collapsed onto the made up bed and drew her feet up from the floor, wincing and groaning slightly. Martha Logan sat down beside her but neither took their eyes off the man in Bauer's grip who he suddenly kicked to knees. Cassie remained standing in the open doorway, her eyes scanning the corridor until Bauer called her inside the room. She shut the door and locked it, stumbling when she saw the expression on Bauer's face as she turned back. It was unlike any she had seen in the year or so since she'd known him, cold, detached, dead, and withdrawn, a face devoid of human occupation that sent a sick feeling into her gut. She opened her mouth but said nothing, merely raised her weapon to cover the man on his knees as Bauer put his weapon down and stepped close behind him.

Jack Bauer avoided the gazes of the three women around him as he wrapped his arms around his captive's neck and squeezed. The eyes of the two sisters met over their heads for a moment, then they resumed watching Bauer choke out the struggling, handcuffed man, ultimately having to throw him face down on the floor, laying on top of him for a full minute after he'd stopped moving and applying pressure for a full minute more still. Chloe glanced over at the hard, bitter cast of Martha Logan's face and caught Jack's eye as he straightened. "What did you do that for?"

"We need information." Three words were all he offered. Three words were enough. Bauer felt the man's pulse at his neck and then came to his feet, knowing he hadn't much time. "Chloe, help me get him in the bathroom."

Gibson took a step closer. "Jack, let me. It'd be easier for--."

"No."

The tall woman stopped in her tracks when he spoke, falling silent herself, and watching as Bauer and her sister dragged the man into the pale blue bathroom that protruded into the suite from the north wall, glimmering with its polished brass trim and silver/blue tile. The light inside was already on; there was water on the floor on the tiny wedge of the small room she could see. As the door shut under the guidance of Bauer's foot, the uneasy feeling in her gut instantly told the detective that this was where Jack Bauer had been.

Swallowing, out of her element when she looked across the room, Cassie met the eyes of former First Lady of the United States wearing a blood-stained white gown and gripping an automatic pistol and suddenly felt a moment of unexpected bonding. Logan smiled over at her, her slender eyebrows arching. "Well, this is a lot more diverting than the floor show I had to endure the last time I was at the Ritz." Gibson froze, this time openly staring at Martha Logan for several seconds before she heard herself begin to laugh.

Chloe O'Brian kept hold of the unconscious man's collar and kept him sitting upright when the lowered him onto the side of the tub, enjoying the numbing feel of the icy tile on her aching feet. She had less than an instant to enjoy it, jerking away slightly as Jack grabbed the shower curtain and snatched it back, not meeting her eyes as she saw what was behind it.

The tub was half-full of water, the black metal-framed desk chair was in it, and along with the curtain, four twisted coils of metal, the bedsprings snapped from the mattress, now hung from the metal shower rod, intertwined with each other. Chloe gasped softly and swallowed, her eyes widening for a moment. She looked at the unconscious man whose collar she was holding and then over at Bauer. His head was down; his eyes were closed but his hands were twitching nervously, as if they alone retained and expressed the need for urgency still upon them. The left one, the one nearest her found something to occupy itself with a moment later, gripping the free right hand she slipped into it as she spoke. "Come on. Let's do this."

A fleeting ghost of gratitude passed across Bauer's face and then they were moving, dragging their captive up over the side of the bath an dropping him in the adjustable chair. Bauer recuffed his hands behind it and twisted the long, dangling coils to the metal bindings. He turned to the wall behind O'Brian and for the first time she noticed the lamp that looked like two ship's lanterns was lying on the counter and a coil of wire had been pulled through the hole in the drywall. Bauer looked down at the woman's bare feet. "Get back where it's dry. My shoes will insulate me." With that he threw one of the thick white towels into the tub, soaking it completely. He pulled it out and threw it over the metal shower rod. He pulled down a second and wrapped it around the wires as the trailed from the wall so that they now passed through the loop of cloth that lay on the sink counter.

O'Brian moved back as he ordered, watching with a firm cast to her jaw as Jack Bauer grabbed the wastecan from the floor under the sink and dipped it into the tub. He threw its contents, debris and water both, into the face of the man restrained to the chair. It took him two more before he sputtered awake then shivered under the fourth onslaught of cold water. His head snapped up and he took the fifth full in the face, gagging and grunting as he turned toward Jack Bauer with a look of pure hatred that was followed by a sudden frigid smile.

"This will do you no good, Mr. Bauer. You're still a prisoner no less than I."

"That means right now is all I've got then, doesn't it? We'll keep it simple. What's your name and what do you want?" Bauer held the coil of electrical wire up between them, the copper ends he'd freed from the back of the light fixture gleaming.

"I told your Mr. Buchanan. I am unimportant, so… my name is Nirmala Hassal and all I want, is justice. You're trapped, Bauer. You can't do anything about anything regardless."

"Then keep talking. I'll give you one chance. You were in charge here. What was your objective?"

Hassal twisted in the metal framed chair, considering his options. He might be able to use the Logan woman's offer and have her talk to the President. What Bauer ultimately did to him he didn't care but if he died now, he would never live down his father's shame and that fool Sukumal would be left in charge. He had to get Bauer to believe him, though, and he had no way of communicating with Kathirivan without a radio on the proper frequency at one of their scheduled intervals. He was still wondering when Bauer grabbed his jaw and pulled his face around. "What was your objective? What do you want?" His voice was low but intense and fierce, leaving Hassal no doubt that Bauer would drop the wires in his other hand into the water if need be.

"To make an offer to your president, an exchange."

"Where are you from?"

No harm answering that at least. There were no relations between their countries now, no one to use. "Kajananphur." To his surprise the woman stepped forward at that, her expressive face thoughtful and then twisted with curiosity.

"We cut off diplomatic ties with them after the revolution and that was a decade ago. You must be with the psycho junta jerks who took over."

Jack shared a quick look with her before refocusing his attention on their prisoner. "And if I could get you to the President?"

"How would you manage that? A low-level teacher at CTU? Whatever game you have managed to play for a little time here, I have five Senators and your Speaker of the House under our control. As soon as my men find you, your stupidity here is over. I'll simply have you killed but since I respect you and your coven of bitches for getting this far, I'll kill you quickly."

Jack glared at him, unmoved. "I don't care what you believe about me but just so you know, the file was fake, and if you didn't know that, you suspect it by now. My name is Jack Bauer; I spent years as an active field agent. I was the man who brought down Charles Logan, and if I'm not good enough for you, his ex-wife is out in the next room and she has Gardner's personal number. You give the order to let those people go upstairs, give us the locations and the configurations of the bombs in this building, and I promise you you'll have a direct conversation with the President and then a fair trial."

Hassal laughed, loud and abruptly. "Really, Mr. Bauer? He will reverse your policy of not negotiating with terrorists? He will restore relations with a country your policies impoverished while you took away the best of our youth? Your president will give us what we want because of you and the Logan woman?"

Jack looked away from the bound man, wondering if he could find the right means to reason with Nirmala Hassal, not in the way that he would think he was being reasoned with, of course, but in a way that would make him think that he was. "What do you have to lose? Your option is I take the chance of getting what I want from you anyway in the time we have and you won't like it if you push me that far."

"Gardner will negotiate, Mr. Bauer. With my plan, with what I have set in motion here, we will still succeed even if you kill me now. Gardner will give us what we want today or there will be two million dead Americans in New York City tomorrow." Hassal fell silent and simply smiled, enjoying the shock and the quiet rage he saw erupting within the eyes of the smallish, pale-haired man leaning over him. The woman took a step closer, her eyes wide as she came within arm's reach of them and watched her man grab the front of his soaked fatigues and pull him far forward as the restraints allowed.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Hassal shrugged as he hung in the other man's grip. "That your president would probably have a lot of explaining to do if the toxins in reservoirs feeding New York City were released and activated and all he would have had to do to stop it was give us what we wanted, missiles we have no intention of using unless the enemy your country created threatens us again. This is all in the interest of peace, Mr. Bauer, but we were sure whoever was in charge here would not see it that way. You can't get out of here and you won't risk two million lives. I talk to your Gardner on my terms and maybe let you pick which one of the women I might let live… after we're done with her."

Jack released him and stepped back, his heart pounding, keeping the smile off his face as he squeezed Chloe's wrist, the one he'd already bruised pulling her into the elevator shaft, to keep any expression but a grimace off her face as well. Hassal was talking because he was under the assumption that they had no way of getting word out about the details of the greatest threat he and his people were planning to use. Whatever happened here now, they could pass on the information and enable the forces on the East Coast to mobilize but to end the threat still around them, they had to let Hassal think that he'd told them nothing for now. Bauer returned to the bound man, just long enough to tie the soaking wet towel up over his mouth but not his nose. He moved off, taking Chloe's arm in his hand as they left the bathroom. Cassie was standing near the edge of the window, her silenced pistol still in her hand; Martha Logan was stretched out on the bed but sat up as soon as Jack and Chloe returned. She watched as Jack, his own shirt-front soaked, waved Cassie to him and waved for the comm in her ear. She tugged it off, grimacing.

"You got something out of him?" She asked, whispering.

"Only because he doesn't think we can do anything with it." Jack looked down at the comm, grimacing, no doubt thinking of the man at the other end with mixed feelings. He'd likely gotten involved with these people to make a fast buck then had blackmailed Chloe's sister into a dangerous mission but had put them into a position to save a lot of lives all the same. However, the latter was hardly intentional on Morris' part, of that he was sure. The man was a fraud, possibly a grifter to some degree, certainly a confidence man, and along with all that drank far too much, even so Bauer doubted he would have gotten involved with anything like a mass terror attack for any amount of money. Yet the fact he might have given them the key to undo it was just, undoubtedly, coincidence and Bauer was highly uninspired to give him much credit. Chloe watched him as he slid the comm into his ear and offered him a weak shrug, their unspoken thoughts and feelings identical regarding her ex-husband.

"O'Brian?"

Morris jumped when the tired-sounding, gritty, and hushed male voice came over the comm. Gibson had said nothing for the last half-hour, leaving him to wonder almost if the comm had been taken from her. "Jack, is that really you?"

"Shut up and listen." Bauer's voice was barely audible but more than enough for the sensitive mike in the comm as he relayed the plans Nirmala Hassal had arrogantly revealed.

Morris O'Brian listened to the threat Bauer outlined with a knot forming in the pit of his stomach. My God, how could he have been this stupid? He was just lucky he wasn't dead. If they had managed to go through with any of that, he would have preferred to be. As it was, he sure as hell wasn't about to hang on to even a few hundred grand if it was nothing but actual blood money. He had to take a few breaths before he found his voice and every bit of cheek it normally had was gone. Any claim of ignorance he had offered Cassandra Gibson took on a new level of pitiable. "Got it. And… listen… I had no clue. I swear to you. Tell Chloe I had--."

"Fine. Bauer out." Jack huffed in a breath and scanned the room, his eyes meeting O'Brian's for the briefest moment before closing. He stepped back to Gibson and offered the comm back to the woman.

"Don't you want to keep that?"

"No. If we're about to get captured, whatever happens, get yourself clear. Go back on profile, don't get caught. The rest of them still don't know you're here. You have to keep the information line out of this building open as long as you can. Is that understood?"

Cassie took the device back with fingers that were suddenly ice-cold, for the first time since she came in here she was flat out terrified. She had heard Jack; there were now millions of lives at stake. How the hell did he do this? How the hell did her sister? Whatever genetics separated them it was somewhere in the region of their brains that let Chloe deal with savages like this every day…. Hah… she though she was the strong one. So much for that. Gibson sighed and forced herself to calm down. Getting overwhelmed wasn't going to do anything no matter what the stakes were.

As the moment passed and Jack gave her a look of understanding along with the order as she stuffed the terror into a corner of her mind met his eyes. "Don't worry. I'm gonna' get out of here so I can kill Morris instead of letting some bomb that won't enjoy it do it." She settled the device back in her ear and looked over at her sister. Chloe was sitting beside Logan on the bed, alternately rubbing her feet and looking as if she could drop back on the bed and not move for the next three days. Jack looked, if anything worse, and Martha Logan's weariness was more in her soul than her body but still evident. Jack was making the decisions as far as she was concerned, now that they had joined forces or until they were forced to divide, and he was not far from having his judgment start to fail. "Okay, Kiddo, what do we do now?"

Bauer's head snapped up as if she'd woken him from a brief stupor. "What?"

"Well, what now?"

Bauer's right hand went to the back of his neck and rubbed for a few moments. "We get moving again. If we can block one of the stairwells so that there's no chance of an alarm being sounded, we can clear a path for a full team to get up to the function room with no chance of retaliation from another direction. I get the feeling there aren't a lot of these guys because this was an inside job."

Martha Logan's turned toward him and she came to her feet. "What about that man in there?" She pointed at the bathroom. "He shot Claire Freeman in cold blood and ordered that man from some financing division nearly beaten to death by that bald gorilla, and it was on his orders those Secret Service men were killed. He'll be a liability if we have to drag him along."

Jack turned a confused stare at the tall woman, not sure for a blurry moment whether or not she was suggesting they summarily execute Hassal -- and then realizing she was just asking what they should do with him. "We'll leave him here. We don't have time to get more out of him. If they find him, he won't know where we've gone and chances are he's no use as a hostage. I've dealt with people like this, they'll kill each other as fast as they'd kill someone else. He doesn't know anything more than he did before as far as we're concerned except somehow Cassie got in here." He finished and then looked at the detective, jerking his head to indicate she should follow him. Chloe looked up from where she was sitting to follow them with her eyes and then looked down at the blue carpeted floor. Mom was going to love what they could tell her of this.

Gibson kept her eyes on the floor as they entered the bathroom, just to keep track where the floor might be wet. What she saw when she looked up froze her breath for a moment but only just. After the initial, and surprisingly to herself, mild shock, she saw nothing more than what she really knew to expect, the terrorist they had captured was sitting in a metal frame desk chair in a half-filled bathtub, soaking wet, gagged by a towel – and with a torn out section of electrical wire, easily long enough to reach the water, looped on the sink counter next to him. Jack glanced back at her, expecting what she didn't know, either an expression of horror or something droll and clever. Well, hell, who was she to judge, she'd basically ripped off the arm of the man who'd been attacking her sister. A million ways she could have done it differently were already chasing themselves through her mind.

She met Bauer's eyes squarely and calmly and then looked over at the bound man in the bath. "Don't tell me, you opened up a charm school; you'll have this jerk lighting up a room in no time?"

The passing wondering on how she might judge him, knowing full well he would have used the electric lines at his disposal if needed, faded as the wise crack left her mouth and Bauer felt the corner of his own mouth lifting. "Tough job when they're not real bright to start with. Help me get him out of there. We're keeping him in the chair."

Jack stepped over to the bound man and unhooked the mattress coils from the shower rod. It took both of them to drag him back out of the half-filled tub, chair and all, chipping the side of the blue fiberglass. She watched as Bauer soaked to more towels in the tub and followed his instructions when he handed them to her, laying them down as a barrier to keep the as much of the water as possible from going out into the rest of the room. "Get clear of him," Jack ordered, at the same time, pulling her away. When he had guided her away from him by several feet and onto what little dry floor remained, Bauer snapped the taser off of her belt and fired.

Hassal's body jerked in the chair as the current surged through his body and wet clothing. Muffled screams came from behind the towel. The sound of the chair creaking and crashing against the chipping tile overcame the sound of the current buzzing and crackling through it. Jack looked at the slumped figure without feeling and then turned. "Just to be safe for us, I--."

"Here." She dropped a second cartridge in his hand and watched the inert man's body leap to a jerking, disturbing temporary life for the next several seconds, this time knocking the chair onto its side on the floor. Jack moved again as the charge crackled to silence, shoving the chair and the man as far as he could from the door. He then grabbed the coil of wire from the sink counter, tucking it into the gap between the sink mirror and the wall, hiding it as much as possible and then unscrewing the other light fixture and removing it to help cover the absence of the first one he'd removed. He threw both the removed light fixtures into the half-full tub and pulled the shower curtain.

Jack took up the remaining length of wire that reached Hassal and twisted it around his head, covering it with the last dry towel and leaving the bare ends dangling just in front of his eyes, near the wet towel still encasing much of his face. For a finishing touch, Bauer turned on the tap and let the tub resume filling, with the intent that it would eventually overflow. The odds that Hassal could move about and make any attempt to free himself once he woke up or if someone moved him to do it, without being bringing the bare, live wires in contact with the water, were now nearly nonexistent.

Cassandra Gibson watched it all with a cold admiration, ever offering Bauer a thin smile when they backed out of the room. "Am I guessing you're hoping to get a few more of them?"

"Yeah. There should be enough water to go over their boots."

Gibson nodded, "Well, when they find him, then I guess he'll still be the one in… charge." She winced in response to the look Bauer gave her before a thin-lipped smile took some of the evening's events from his face for a fleeting moment. "Sorry, Kiddo, family trait. By the way, now that we have a second, did you pitch two guys off the roof or were those hostages?"

"They were dead already. I killed one. Chloe killed the other."

The look of shock Bauer was expecting didn't come to the face of the taller officer. She merely sighed and shrugged. "Okay, and I tasered a guy twice on the way up and stuffed him between the vending machines in the south stairwell."

Jack nodded as they returned to the others, his mind turning over the options and reaching the next step. "Then let's clear the north one. Gather up all the bedsheets here. There won't be enough, so we'll try to find the linen closet or another few open rooms." He didn't elaborate just extended his hand to Gibson. "Give me your comm." She pulled it free and Bauer slipped it back in his ear. "Morris, how close are you to getting anyone in the back door? We're going to try and block the stairwell up to the hostages."

"At least another hour. You all might want to find somewhere to hole up, somewhere defensible. That's not me talking, that's what Manning is telling me to tell you."

"Tell Curtis we're acting surgically and we're armed. We've taken out six of them and I've used a seventh one as bait to take out a few more. The Senators, the Speaker, and the rest of the political guests are still on the fourteenth floor as far as we know. Tell him to concentrate there. After we secure the stairwell, we're going to try and get a status on the rest of the hostages."

"Yeah, well, keep in mind that building's got four bombsites inside it while you're in there playing hero." There was a sudden huff at the other end of the comm. "Forget what Manning wants for now. Why don't you get Chloe and Logan out of there and then lead the teams back inside? I think I can get that door open for another few seconds where Cassie came in without them noticing."

Jack stopped in his tracks, looking around the room and feeling the slightest temptation to do so before logic and his temper ironically got the better of him at the same time. "Why don't you just shut up and do your job? I don't know exactly how you got involved in this but I'm guessing you got yourself mixed up with these people over money, and you probably blackmailed Cassie in here to cover your sorry ass. If we live through this Morris, you better be running when I get out of here and that'll only be until I find you. …then, we're gonna' have a little talk. Chloe stays with me, if she's not safer at least she's getting some respect."

Jack snatched the comm from his ear and tossed it back angrily to a Cassie Gibson wearing a smile so tight her lips had disappeared. "Jack, whatever does happen, that just made tonight worth it."

Her arms full of white bed sheets, her eyes narrowed beneath a scowl of exhaustion and frustration, Chloe glared for a moment at the comm in her sister's hand and then looked Jack Bauer squarely in the eye. "I'm not leaving you. I don't care if you could get me out of here with nobody else in danger. Until everybody's safe, I'm in this. … and now I have to live just so I get my chance to tell Morris off myself. He's the last person who ought to be manipulating you."

Bauer glanced at the door, all too aware of the passing of time, and closed on her, his lips dropping to her ear. She realized he was shaking ever so slightly when he took hold of her arms around the bundle of linen. "He's the last person I'd let do it." Bauer shook himself voluntarily and lifted his head to look at all three of the women. "I have a plan but we need to move… now."


	10. Chapter 10

"We'll do that, Mr. President. You'll know what's happening before we do if we can manage it.

"Yes, Sir, I am aware of the political sensitivities that exist. I'll apprise Mr. Manning of that, also, but I'm afraid you'll have to leave that in the Navy's hands for now. It may have everything to do with their demands but we haven't heard anything more from Bill Buchanan since the first call to release arranging Senator Freeman's release. We believe Mr. Bauer may have created some interference inside that's causing them problems. He's told us now to hold off sending in teams until he's cleared a path.

"Yes, Sir, Martha Logan is currently on the move with Mr. Bauer inside the structure."

Curtis Manning looked up sharply from the floor plan of the Cerulean Cove on the screen before him when Aaron Pierce's voice changed from the appeasing and calming tone to one of cold arrogance, "Yes, Sir, I am also aware of the public relations aspect if anything were to happen to her under your administration given how you got your office. However, you might want to be aware that that's the last damn thing on my mind, Sir. We'll call you, Mr. President."

Manning cleared his throat slowly. "Was that wise?"

Pierce's face was still livid when he turned to look at the black man. "He's more scared of Martha than he is of not getting re-elected. The Suvarov's are only still talking to this country because of her; he knows it and knows I know it. Not a damn thing he can do to me."

"Fair enough." Curtis sat back and swept his eyes casually over the screens around him, an old habit when there were so many young faces reading them. The inside of the Mobile Command Unit was nearly silent; their situation had been static for a good while now. They were waiting for Jack's cue to move in; the teams were assembled and ready to go the moment it came, tactical and ordinance both. "What were you talking to him about that's in the Navy's hands?"

"There's a nuclear submarine, Ohio Class – the USS Alexander, about 450 nautical miles off the coast of Kajananphur and it's being tailed on the surface by a couple of ships from what Kajananphur calls their "navy" since a few hours after this started. They're guessing that means whatever is going on here might be a state-sanctioned terror operation."

Manning scoffed quietly. "Damn, do you think?"

"They don't want to take any aggressive action without being sure but a British carrier group on maneuvers in the Indian Ocean has been -- made aware of the situation. It's the nearest force and the British Prime Minister and Parliament are willing to act on our behalf.."

Manning froze suddenly, recalling bit by bit the information that Morris O'Brian had relayed to them from Jack's hurried conversation with the man they had briefly captured. "Wait a minute, wait a minute. I think I might know what they want." He reached up and picked up the direct line to CTU. "Emilia, it's Curtis. I need to know the nuclear armament of an Ohio Class submarine."

"Should only take a second, let me get it from the DOD server." Manning could here her working a few moments more. "There it is; they carry twenty-four Trident II D-5 nuclear missiles. Anything else?'

"No, thanks." He returned the handset to the cradle and ran a hand over his face. "According to … our source, Jack was told there were to be missiles involved in what these people wanted."

"Well, from what we've seen of those ships tracking it, they certainly lack any capability of being a threat to the sub. They would need to try and strike a deal with some other leverage for us to turn anything of that sort over." Pierce replied, scowling quietly as yet another piece of the puzzle fell in place. "Good call."

Manning shrugged and shook his head. "It's a "good probably" at this point but it makes sense. What did they say about the reservoirs?"

Pierce's expression lost its dour edge at the change in topic, reflecting approval at the strategy being followed this time. "That's being handled quietly. They're scanning the records and assembling a team to take over monitoring the pumping stations and their new valve chamber out of the people who've been working at the water department the longest, checking for anyone employed at any of them or with the Fisheries Department and the Natural Resources Police who may have emigrated from anywhere else in the past five years. The E.P.A. is going to put teams downriver of all five reservoirs feeding the city to test for any-and everything, and disguise them as fishermen. The Mayor's been alerted that they'll call a shut down of the water system and issue a civil alert if anything turns up. There always could be a fail-safe plan that if these people don't hear from whoever's behind this by a certain time, that they're under orders just act on their own; that's the real fear right now since it looks like they might have problems inside."

"What about enforcement? Anything a little more direct or are they debating the PR of that, too?"

Pierce's face quirked into a mild grimace. "NYPD is getting S.W.A.T. teams assembled two different staging areas at the pumping facilities to move in there. They don't want to tip anybody off and end up triggering an event themselves."

Manning felt some of the tension leave him. What little information they did have was being put to good use already but he'd been around long enough to know there were no guarantees.

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"Where'd they find these guys?"

"Cal-Tech. They came up in the CTU database right away. They hacked into the mainframes at NORAD, the DOD, and Los Alamos as a bet between themselves. Last one to make it in had to wear a dead fish in a plastic back for a week. We told them if they gave whoever the Hell Manning has them talking to a hand we'd take them all off the no fly list and drop the federal charges."

"They should've offered the blond guy the secret formula not to smell like rotten bait instead."

"Just stay upwind of him. All we have to do is baby-sit until they hack whatever they're hacking in that hotel." Marcus Griffin shrugged and sighed, walking away from the junior CTU recruit and glancing up the round, glacial tower of the Cerulean Cove two blocks distant. Eight blocks back he could still see the massive police presence that was swarming over the area. The immediate ten block radius had been evacuated around the besieged hotel and the occupants of the buildings taken to the staging area, one of the American Airlines hangars at LAX, to be screened. He had volunteered for the job he had now when the three figures who had shown up on the CTU scan had been brought to the Mobile Command Unit to be prepped and federally deputized to help whoever Manning had running comms out of the hotel. He had done so to be closer to the action, because he owed Jack Bauer a debt for saving his life once already, talking him through a desperate and unexpected situation when he was still recovering from torture at the hands of the Chinese.

Two blocks back from the Cerulean Cove, he stood watching the three underfed and disoriented-looking young men sitting at the table behind the mom-and-pop car rental agency, muttering to themselves and working at three separate laptops to expand the time interval for opening the service door that had allowed them to get someone inside. They had jacked into a cable one of the CTU techs had brought out from beneath the street, one that their mysterious benefactor had created a dormant connection to when he had programmed the security system. The connection operated below the threshold on several parameters to make it harder to detect but it was serviceable enough. The three young men had been told that any discovery of their interference was a matter of life and death, potentially their own, and that in their work toward expanding the time frame they should only take the most minimal of chances.

Not far from where the cable they were using emerged from a manhole, ran the cable that originated at the Cerulean Cove itself and lead to a wireless transmitter through which Curtis Manning was receiving communications from whomever it was next to the hotel. Griffin had orders to move in and protect him if he was discovered, but other than that the man (he at least knew it was a man) was to be left alone. Where he was located at the bottom of a truck ramp, it was impossible to see him regardless but he had been provided a silent alarm.

Jeremy Merkel reloaded the hacked diagram again and started tracing the communication lines hightlighted in blue. The lines leading in from the video feeds were green and the lines bringing power to the system were red. He'd figured out where each branch of the fiber optic lines were leading and was sorting through the signals each was carrying. Merkel pulled a stray lock of dirty blond hair out from in front of his eyes and tucked it back, rapping the shoulder of the man to his left as he hand descended. "Ito, look at this mess. You got that line going outside on yours?"

"Which one?"

"The fiber op going east feeding the line out of the security system."

"Wait a minute."

The Asian youth flipped through three screens of programming data he was slowly rewriting, one to hold the door open for three minutes and another to prevent the change from being detected by removing any discrepancies from the scans that came before it. The man next to him, sporting a blue mohawk and a nose ring, was working on the program that monitored the whole system for any interference.

"Yeah, I got it, too. You're not crazy this time. There's an encrypted signal going out of the security system. Not much of one; let me see if I can separate it."

Griffin moved in closer, hearing the tone of question suddenly in the voices of the three people behind him. "Something wrong?"

"No, well, I don't know but it's weird," Merkel answered, his face contorting as he pointed at the offending blue line. "There's a data feed out to the east, too, and it's not on the system schematics you gave us. Somebody else has a line in there, too. Hey, maybe the bad guys don't even know about it."

"Can you tap into it… without anybody knowing?"

"To get back to see my Mom in Seattle without spending my life on the PCH, damn right."

Marcus sighed angrily. "This is about a little more than your no-fly rights. Try and remember that. That building blows and I don't think this little shack behind us is going to protect us a whole lot. You work on that," he pointed at the blue line. "You two, Ito and Devon, keep trying to get us in there."

Griffin raised his hand to his ear, about to call Curtis Manning when Jeremy Merkel suddenly pushed his chair back on two legs. "Whoa! Damn! Somebody's a pretty high roller in there."

"What are you talking about?"

A lopsided grin appeared on the blond youth's face as he looked up at the CTU agent. "I covered up my tracks and got in there like a ghost and picked up the last data packet that went through! Somebody in there just got a confirmation of a hundred twenty-five big ones transferred to some Swiss account."

"A hundred twenty five thousand? Hmph, maybe one of them is trying to buy off their own ransom."

Merkel snorted. "Think outside your pay grade, Dude. I'm talking a hundred twenty-five million. It got scarfed out of Wells Fargo and dumped in Switzerland. That's the bad news, though."

Griffin felt the hairs on the back of his neck curl and the slow run of adrenalin enter his blood stream. "And the good?"

"Whoever did that put a passive keylogger into their system. I got the account number, the passwords into the system, and it looks like they got a slow-acting virus crawling around in there, too. Whoever transferred the money also screwed 'em good."

Griffin felt a smile come over his face in the darkness. "Good work. Stay on it. One more like that and Fed might spike for a first class ticket, too, not just let you fly again." He offered the younger man a smile and, this time, finished reaching for his comm.

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Curtis Manning didn't smile as he took in the news, only nodded and began wondering what his next step was. Celebrating the victories, big, small and hopefully complete, would come later. There was, nevertheless, some relief in his voice when he cut off the comm and turned to meet Aaron Pierce's inquiring stare. "Someone sabotaged their computer system, and got us the passwords and account number in Switzerland these people are using. Tell the President to bring whatever power he has to bear on the Swiss to get them to give us something. We don't know how many lives are at stake; we can't be fooling around with the damn sovereignty of their banks."

Pierce nodded. "Good news then; that's something. Any idea how we got it?"

"The only thing we know is that whoever did it – did it in the process of stealing 125,000,000 from Wells Fargo Bank here in L.A. There's only one person in there who could have pulled that off technically and had the nerve to do it: Chloe."

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Sukumal Mayuri looked down at the man in the black and gray fatigues only with curiosity, noting that his cigarette had burned the carpet and left a small black hole in the middle of Australia. He lay dead at the lobby entrance up to the north tower, a bullet wound in his throat but very little blood. He'd died instantly. Someone had failed terribly in gathering their information about the government people who were scheduled to be here; one of them was apparently not a bureaucrat. The shot was clean and, at a guess, not done from close range. Sukumal eased his bulk down and closed the dead man's eyes, then stood and looked around the vast lobby of the hotel. He had only seen the pictures and heard the stories and reports of its construction while he was in training to be on the strike force, then became one of the men who had each been in their own little cell, here only to be called in for this mission once everything was in place. He was ashamed to say they had lost eight of them in the past two years to the temptations offered around them. The men who were here were the ones who had been the most loyal to the cause, who had not fallen to avarice but as martyrs.

The next thing that drew his attention as he crossed the lobby was a waft of cold air. He turned and scanned the doors that had been sprayed black when they'd entered and begun herding all the guests on the floors beneath the function room who were not officials into the concrete storage room near the pool. One of the doors was gone, reduced to a pile of glittering debris that scattered out into the lobby and the cement outside. He was still staring at it when a voice called down to him from the top of the broad staircase.

"Sukumal, there is another man dead here; he has been shot."

Sukumal sighed and turned toward the man who had spoken, looking up at him as he crossed the huge lobby, crouching behind the length of the front desk to keep from being seen through the open gap in the blacked out row of glass doors. He emerged from it and moved quickly up the stairway. Nehir, in his jungle camouflage, stood a few yards back at the top of it, at his feet was another one of their men with another, larger wound gaping in his throat. Nehir scowled and nudged the body with his foot. "The guard who was on the door to the south tower is gone as well.."

"Maybe he is with Hassal's mind."

Nehir's disapproval at the remark was apparent but he remained silent. Sukumal nevertheless returned his scowl. "Your loyalty is to Kajananphur; do not forget that. Two men have been the cause of the failures here, one of them is Nirmala himself."

"Nirmala Hassal saved my family when the Revolution began and the government set fire to their home. I will obey you until he is found or if we know he is dead."

Sukumal stared at the problem before him as he took in this new bit of information. "Then help me find him, and when we do, we'll find Bauer."

Nehir twitched his rifle barrel, still pointed at the floor, in the direction of the lobby doors. "Bauer's long gone. You saw the door."

Sukumal Mayuri offered the other man a thin, cold, dismissive laugh. "The man who has done what you have seen here is no coward and no fool. He would not leave while others were still in danger. He only wants us to think he's gone. Move out; search this floor. He's not far because he's still trapped." Nehir grimaced again and walked off, raising his rifle and moving slowly into the corridor behind him, leaving his new commander staring at the shot open front door. Sukumal stared at the opening with growing unease - and an even faster growing respect and hatred for this Jack Bauer. Whoever he really was he was not what the records said, no more than any of their men who had come to this country years ago to begin the plan that Bauer was now unraveling. Sukumal was still lost in his thoughts when the scream reached his ears, a cry of alarm that changed in an instant to a blood-chilling shriek of pain. He dropped his rifle into his hands and took cover near the entry to the hall, crouching near a potted palm.

Minutes passed in a silence so absolute that Sukumal became certain that not only was Nehir dead but that however he had died, whoever had killed him – by whatever means, was long gone. He emerged from cover and moved slowly and cautiously into the hallway, going less than a quarter of the way around before he found an open door into one of the rooms. An unpleasant smell of ozone drifted from it and glancing inside the door he could see the carpet was soaked. He inched up farther then swung into the doorway, rifle aimed… and found two empty beds facing him, one unmade and one made but rumpled. What he could see of the carpet in the dark of the room was a sodden mess.

Sukumal moved further into the small corridor that led past the bathroom, and finally saw what he suspected he would as he moved closer to the inner doorway. Nehir was sprawled out on the tile floor, breathing but unconscious, face-down overtop of Nirmala Hassal who lay on his side, bound to a metal desk chair. A line of towels stretched out across the floor, forming a partially effective dam for the water that was overflowing from the bathtub onto the tile. It was nearly an inch deep behind the long rolls of twisted cloth. Without immediately seeing the source, he knew from the smell that both men had been electrocuted. Since the lights in the rest of the room were out, and the circuit likely blown, he also assumed it was now safe to touch them. He snared the back of Nehir's collar and tossed him aside to splash onto the tile then bent over Hassal and righted the chair. He felt for the pulse in his throat. It was still there but far weaker and far more irregular than what the level of a single electric shock should have rendered it. Careful to control the blow from his huge hand, he drew it back and slapped Hassal across the face twice.

A long moment passed before Hassal took a rattling breath then lifted his head, his eyes rolling back when he saw the large, familiar face before him. He gasped out his first priority. "Bauer… dead?"

"If he is, it would be no thanks to you. How long ago did he leave you dumped in the floor?"

The tone in the voice of the man to whom he had been a superior the last time they had parted was enough to rouse the bound man even further from his battered stupor. "Who do you think you are talking to, Fool? Get me out of this chair and call Kathirivan. We need more men; I want Bauer dead and his woman and woman who killed Janavi."

"So another man is dead?" Sukumal grunted with disgust. "What other woman?"

"Some loud, worthless bitch that came in from outside." Hassal scowled angrily, mostly at himself.

"So, they have a way in, too?" Sukumal stood back, looming over the bound man even more than he usually did, no longer cowed by his authority or his history. "How long ago did they leave you here?"

"They shocked me. I have no idea."

"Well, then that makes two people who are worthless, hmph?" Sukumal raised his rifle and leveled it at the bound man's face. "A decade's work – and your greed and incompetence have nearly destroyed it or is that what you intended, to be a man like your father, a traitor?"

"How dare you speak to me in such a manner?! I am the People's Hand, your Gener--."

"You are an idiot tied to a chair!" Sukumal replied, cutting him off and kicking it so that it rolled back, slamming into the tub and nearly falling over again. "If I had found you dead I would have still had some respect for you! I am in charge of this mission now. There will be no more entertaining yourself with women crying to care for the wounded, or who offer you bribes. If I had time for the justice you deserved, I would take you back to Kathirivan and tell him your crimes and let him deal with you, but like everything else that has fallen to me. You're not even worth wasting a bullet."

"You bastard! I found you. I saved your miserable life or would you have preferred the smell of elephant dung in your nostrils every day?"

"At least the elephants knew their job." Sukumal reached down and grabbed the curved undersides of the arms of the chair, moving with amazing speed for someone his size, too fast for the kicked blows to his legs and torso to land, and flipped the metal chair and its occupant backwards and sideways into the tub. Hassal's head thrashed back and forth, just barely beneath the sloshing waters, and he struggled straighten his arms and lift his mouth and nose clear. He legs kicked upwards, jerking the chair along the bottom of the already chipped tub, working against the laws of physics to right the chair against his own weight, the chair's, and the force of the water.

Sukumal Mayuri watched his former general with disgust as his struggles went on for nearly two minutes, before the waters finally began their inevitable victory. Hassal had managed a few times to get a breath of dry air before his arms gave out and his legs could no longer throw themselves forward violently enough to lift him off the floor of the tub. He had only prolonged the agony. Blurred and slightly magnified, his face reflected the horror of his final struggles as he lay staring sightlessly upwards through the water, water stained with the blood that still slowly leaked from the gashes in his arms beneath the cuffs. Sukumal turned off the water, not wasting it out of respect. It had done its job… now, so would he.

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Jack Bauer slid down the wall and eased himself onto the floor of the landing. It would take the women a few minutes more to finish and then they would move to the next floor. Chloe was on her knees, working furiously, at the door a few feet from him and on the landing below, Martha Logan duplicated her actions while Gibson stood guard. He closed his eyes and felt himself drifting off in seconds, making a panicked grab at the railing next to his head as his momentarily dulled sense of balance shocked him back into recalling the concrete stairway that loomed below him. His sharp intake of breath and grunt caused Chloe to spin around in time to see him shaking off the startled disorientation. She dropped what she was doing and crossed over to him, hiding, with effort, a sharp wince as she knelt down and took her weight off her aching feet. "You must be exhausted. You were out in the field teaching all day; I had my butt in a chair when I wasn't making a fool of myself in front of politicians."

"They all still stayed in town; you must be losing your touch."

The analyst smiled despite herself and sat down on the landing, wiggling her feet under Bauer's legs to rest them gingerly on the first step. She leaned forward, her arms crossed loosely, to rest her head on his knees as she faced him. "Promise me something?"

"Anything, just not right now."

She smiled again and ran her hand over his legs on either side, rubbing them gently as she spoke. "That we never have to go to anymore of these stupid things. I'm tired of being some secret trophy just because no one wants to admit what went on with Logan; I'm tired of being dragged out and told how great it was that we got rid of him, how great it was for America, and then they won't tell people the truth. To me, if I were just some civilian, I would've heard it and thought, 'Gee, isn't it great the Constitution worked'? I don't get asking people to vote for you so you can treat them like they're dumb."

Bauer opened his eyes just barely and offered her a thready laugh. "It's called representative democracy. As far as the rest - I don't give a damn about Charles Logan, Chloe, not anymore. I'm not going back. I have too many people I give a damn about; right now I just want to make sure some of them survive, and after that, no, I promise, no more of this." Jack pulled himself up off the wall and inched forward when she straightened, resting the side of his head against her own as they sat on the edge of the stairs. "I'm sorry. I didn't know you hated it that much."

"I actually didn't mind it the first few times. It used to be kind of cool, then it all got phony." She turned her neck slightly, leaning up to kiss him away from the thankfully diminishing lump as her arm went around him. "How's your head?"

Bauer's eyes snapped open but his gaze turned inward. "Actually, it's fine. I hadn't even noticed."

"Good. I'm glad." Her hands brushed over his legs again, this time more slowly. "What happens when we finish this?"

"Then we signal CTU to send in the teams, and as soon as they can get in front of us, we get the hell out of here. We've done our part."

Chloe nodded, knowing that they still had work to do on the other floors. "More than our part, plus you trained half the guys who'll be coming in so it'll be like you're still here. I've been thinking, Jack, doing the math. Unless they have more somewhere we don't know about, there can't be more than around fifty of these jerks. I've been working on the odds of how often we've run into them, how many floors there are, how many we just saw, and then how many we've gotten rid of. We're pushing the odds, though, about them not finding out what we're doing. We've killed three of them so far already doing this. The sooner we can call them to get in here the better and if Cassie's right, this building could still go any second."

"You mean we should get moving?"

"Yeah."

The word hung in the air but they remained still for several moments more, long enough that Cassie took her eyes off the small window in the door leading out into the corridor and looked up at her sister and Jack Bauer folded onto one another at the top of the stairs, both of them clearly exhausted, Bauer especially. She wanted nothing more than to take a picture of them and send that through the comm to Morris. She grimaced and reached up to her ear, suddenly reminded of how long they'd gone without reporting in. "Morris."

"You called, Darling?"

"Don't… just tell Curtis we're almost ready for him. I don't know how long we've got before they figure out what Jack's done here. The teams might have to risk coming in the front door if you still can't that other one open more than a couple seconds."

"Manning's got a couple of kids working on it. Won't be much longer. He did tell me the next time you called in to get Martha Logan on the comm. Is she with you?"

"Gee, Morris, if we'd lost a First Lady somewhere along the line here, do you think I might not have mentioned…? Fine. What?"

Morris O'Brian glared up the concrete slope before him and glanced up at what little he could see of the night sky; he'd asked for that one. "I have a message for her, that's all."

"What is it?"

"Manning said to tell her that Aaron Pierce is here, that he's part of the team outside now. That was it."

"I'll take care of it. Do you know anything about New York?"

"New York's being handled quietly. They don't want to tip anybody's hand." He paused and took a breath he knew Gibson could hear and stared at the screen before him without seeing it. "Cassie, I hope you believe me now. I never would have had anything to do with these bastards if I thought there was any chance they were involved in anything that would kill millions of people. Even you can't think--."

"No, Morris, I don't. I don't, but not condoning mass murder doesn't mean you aren't a conniving screw-up."

"Fair enough. I suppose you think I ought to thank you for that much." O'Brian paused again, chewing at his lip and staring at the momentarily meaningless lines on the screen again, long enough that an irritated voice cut into his distraction.

"This isn't a 900 number, Morris. I didn't call to hear you breathing, so if there's someth--."

"Is Chloe all right?"

Gibson glanced back up at her sister and Bauer, still frozen in an exhausted tangle with one another at the top of the stairway; the last time there had been a stairway involved with her sister and Morris, it had been leading away from her home and Chloe, in tears, had been watching her drag him down it in cuffs. "Is Chloe all right? Huh, sorry to tell you, Shoe-Boy, aside from being in this seasick, wired-to-blow fleatrap with a bunch of terrorists, she's… the most content and happy I've ever seen her."

Morris huffed one more breath in her ear, one that was long and slow and ended with a word that caused a nanosecond of pity to flash through Cassandra Gibson's gut. "Good."

The nanosecond gone, Gibson reached for the comm. "Yeah, it is. I'll call you when we're done." She tabbed the comm off and glanced up to see Jack and Chloe slowly untangling themselves. Chloe returned to the door and Bauer pulled himself to his feet, watching her finish. The detective then turned her attention back to Martha Logan. "Mrs. Logan."

A tired, watery sigh came from the soft lips of the former First Lady. "If I call you Cassie, will you call me Martha? I only keep that bastard's name so people will be reminded of who I was when I turned on him and The Enquirer was wrong when they said I was spotted walking on water. Now,… please… try again,… Cassie."

Gibson knew it was a gesture of respect, an honor, a sign she'd made a good impression on what was most likely the most respected woman in the country. She just couldn't get all of that to mesh with the cop she had comfortably been a few hours ago, the one in a dark, filthy alley with road grime smeared into her face, tackling and being cursed at by a drug-dealing perp. She withered under the friendly and encouraging glare of the blue eyes across from her own, however, and opted, as her sensei had trained her, to move in harmony with a stronger "opponent". "Okay, …Martha,… I have a message for you from Curtis Manning. He said to tell you that Aaron Pierce is here and he's part of the team now."

Martha Logan didn't move but the eyes that had been offering the detective a gentle reproach suddenly filled with tears that spilled down over a sudden, fierce, and determined smile. She closed her them and regained control of herself in moments, that determination flooding to the rest of her and seeming to bleed over to them all as Jack and Chloe came down from the next level. "Let's go, you three, let's go. We've got seven more floors to lock down, and then we're getting the hell out of here. I have a date to finish."

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The men, his men, stared at him when Sukumal Mayuri returned to the 14th floor, his shirtfront soaked and an expression on his face that invited no questioning as to why. He scanned the room and found the item he was looking for on one of the small portable bars. He checked his watch as he picked the radio up and scowled. Bill Buchanan watched him closely; there was something different about him. The giant was suddenly both relaxed and resolved and he radiated a quiet arrogance. He was barely looking at the others of his task force by now as he waited for what Buchanan assumed was a seconds long timed opening in the scrambling that kept them from communicating electronically otherwise. He called four of the men over to him and sent them off at a run. As for the hostages his gaze passed over them with no interest at all, as if they didn't even register any more than the furniture or the potted trees. At last the moment came and Buchanan stifled a grimace of disappointment as the huge man left the function room and went back out into the short hallway.

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"Why are you late?"

There was an edge to Kathirivan Bhakti's voice that caught Sukumal Mayuri off-guard when he should have expected it. He backed down into the short side hallway that branched off the one in the main room and lowered his voice. "This is not Hassal."

Kathirivan rocked back on his heels and put aside the cup of green tea in his hand, not meeting the gaze of Patel Amrish as he waved for the handset to be given to him instead of having a discourse over the speaker phone. Something was wrong. No point in it becoming a confidence-rattling issue for the others. He lowered his voice as he walked with the cordless handset away from the others. "What's happened to Hassal?"

There was no hesitation on the other end of the phone when Sukumal answered, if there had been, if he had sensed any hesitation in the words that came next he would have doubted them more. Instead he took them at their face value for now, for the sake of the mission. "Hassal is dead. I killed him. He was making mistakes that compromised the mission. I also killed him because he allowed himself to be captured."

"Captured?!" The veneer of control left the man in the dark suit and he glanced back at the curious and startled faces of those manning the computers. "How could he have been captured?"

"There is a man here, a field agent named Bauer who escaped when the hostages were first gathered. He and a woman. I captured them again and wounded Bauer but Hassal took the woman up on an offer of money and information in exchange for help for him. After that they escaped again and now we are finding our people dead all over the building, seven of them, maybe 8 are dead, so Bauer has their weapons and a woman has somehow gotten in from the outside who killed one of them. Hassal went to track them down but the fool got caught himself instead. When I found him, I killed him. He had done enough damage. I have fewer than thirty men left."

Bhakti sighed to himself. No point in taking issue with it now. The situation was what it was and if Hassal had failed that spectacularly just when the decade of planning and effort had come to fruition, then so be it. He would deal with Sukumal Mayuri for not calling him before acting later. "And about that… damage: what is your plan?"

"After Hassal's foolishness we have not had a chance to state out demands. If you would like to have their Speaker call the President, I will find Bauer and kill him."

"I don't care about this field agent. Your men were going to be casualties, and if they are getting killed they did not train well enough. Now I need only enough time to have our demands relayed." The frustration won for just a moment and Bhakti glanced at the others quickly then walked away from the people monitoring the computers around him. He sat down in a rusting chair several yards away from the others, weighing his options. "Even if someone is inside, they still are not able to communicate through the jamming field, so they can't know what we want or the leverage we have. I need to make that clear." The fail-safe would engage a few hours after dawn Eastern time after the shifts had changed at the Ashokon and Croton plants and the Van Courtland Park valve chamber unless he informed the operatives at those places that they had what they wanted, the USS Alexander's nuclear full nuclear compliment. While it would bring him joy to see the death of his enemies in such numbers, using that fail-safe also would achieve nothing toward their mission and he was running out of time to keep that from happening. If he failed and Kajananphur did not become a nuclear power, America, NATO, and the European Union would bring together their forces and destroy his country, militarily and economically, and then morally by inflicting their version of "freedom". Cursing Hassal and Bauer in one breath, Kathirivan raised the satellite phone to his face again. "All right. Get me the Speaker. We will tell the President our terms."

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Bill Buchanan looked up from his seat on the floor with a tired but stoic grimace, watching the huge terrorist move into the center of the room, his silenced weapon drawn. He fired it once into a light fixture in the ceiling, inciting a small explosion, sparks, and screams, some of them from hostages who had not seen him even raise the handgun. When the sounds faded, he spoke, his voice carrying easily to every corner of the circular room as he stood in the shadow of the fiberglass volcano. "My name is Sukumal and I am in charge here now. There will be no more attending to the wounded. There will be no more releases before we have what we want. If you want to survive, you will not forget that you have no way out of here now except that I succeed. Your life is in your President's hands and what is about to be asked of him is not unreasonable and I am here on behalf of a nation that deserves the sovereignty and safety you take for granted." He lowered the gun and walked through the silent and further stunned hostages, up to the level where Richard Dominguez had slowly come to his feet, anticipating his approach. Buchanan glanced around the room as he stood, observing the rest of the hostage-takers. If they were alarmed or betrayed by the actions of the huge man there was no sign of it. They either agreed that Hassal had been a failure (which was correct from their point of view) or they were too afraid of Sukumal to object.

Richard Dominguez brought his legs under him and ignored their shaking. "I will go along with you, Mr. Sukumal. I will contact the President but I will remind you again that we do not negotiate with terrorists."

Sukumal closed the distance between them, looming over the heavy set man with the satellite phone extended. "Reality changes policy. When this is done no country, including yours, will threaten Kajananphur again."

Dominguez took the device wordlessly, finding to his surprise, that a strange sense of peace had settled over him. He entered the number and pressed the transmit key.

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"This is it. This is it."

Curtis Manning and Aaron Pierce came to their feet and went to the communications console in the CTU command vehicle, listening to the connection tone as the equipment scanned the normal frequencies and a calm male voice filled the air. "White House Communications Office."

"This is Speaker of the House Richard Dominguez. Priority Red. I need to speak to the President."

"Yes, Sir."

Manning ground his teeth, hoping Hal Gardner was as cool a customer as he'd seemed during the covert impeachment hearings. He had the upper hand; he knew what Jack Bauer had shared with Morris O'Brian when he'd interrogated the man named Hassal, the information he had arrogantly given up since he believed Jack had no way to relay it. Gardner knew what the threat was already and that it was being handled, the trick was for him to sound shocked but not overconfident.

Hal Gardner's voice, even over a comm-line and three thousand miles away was imposing and gruff, especially at this hour of the night/morning. He sounded calm enough and there was an extra edge of authority in his voice. "Mr. Dominguez, this is the President. I've been briefed on your likely situation. Where are we going from here?"

"I am in the presence of a man named Sukumal. He has taken over operations from the man in charge earlier. He has a list of demands he would like to present. I've told him the American policy on capitulation but he would like to speak with you."

There was a pause, one that grew uncomfortably long before Gardner spoke again. "It's also not the policy of the President of the United States to be subject to the demands of terrorist personally. I am the United States as it were in the sense. If you can tell me the situation of the hostages and I'm satisfied, I will consider lower level talks to peacefully resolve this. If these people have done their homework, and I assume they have given the scale of their operation, they should know all of that."

Dominguez looked terrified for a long moment. He'd forgotten that aspect of it himself until this moment. Of course, he was right. He would talk to Dominguez but not Sukumal himself, and it was a policy he would not be willing to violate under the circumstances of a few high-placed hostages. Gardner had no idea what was going on in New York. "I understand Mr. President but there is something you should know, these people claim to have toxins ready to be released into the water supply of New York City, enough to kill up to two million people, starting with the children dying first. I don't know if that changes the parameters, Mr. President, but it's not just the lives of the people in this hotel at stake."

There was another pause, one not quite as long, and there was a tremor in Gardner's voice when he spoke again. "Put the bastard on."

Sukumal took the sat-phone back with a glare of triumph as Dominguez returned weakly to the floor. "You did your part well," he muttered quietly, then raised the phone to his face. "You know my name, I am the leader of Army of the People's Hand of Kajananphur, a country I assume you might recall defiling and undermining and making vulnerable to its ene--."

"I know what happened in your country. I'm not debating you on those points. I want to know what you want."

Sukumal glanced triumphantly down at Dominguez. "The entire compliment of nuclear missiles off the USS Alexander. You have probably been alerted that it is being tracked on the surface by our navy. It is to surface and sail under escort to our capital on the coast and there turn its payload over to our military. The alternative is I will give the order to release the toxin. Move against us and the toxin will be released as a fail-safe."

"You can't possibly --."

"No more than we could have taken over this facility?" Sukumal offered the President a dismissive laugh. "You have two minutes to give me answer or Senator Dobbs dies. Two minutes after that, Senator Stovall dies, two minutes af--."

"I understand. I need fifteen minutes, Mr. Sukumal. This is isn't a dictatorship. I need to consult with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Vice-President."

Sukumal brushed a hand over his mustache and chin. "A President with no power… hah. Very well, take the time you need. It's mine to give."

Bill Buchanan studied the carpet beneath his folded legs, ignoring the slight, gasping pants of the Speaker of the House. Either Gardner had simply caved in seconds as soon as the nature of the threat was revealed to him or… or… something else entirely was going on. The Hal Gardner he knew, who had faced down Charles Logan, who had overseen his prosecution, and who had given the Justice Department unlimited power to tear apart Logan's life, and who had worked tirelessly to maintain the anti-terrorism treaty the Suvarov Administration had wanted to cancel after the failed assassination attempt on American soil, was the most unlikely man in Washington to give in so easily, even facing the deaths of millions. Buchanan kept his head down to hide the smile he worried might still escape him if he looked at this Sukumal in the eye. He simply sat next to Dominguez and stared at the floor, the picture of defeat, certain in his mind and heart that whatever Gardner was about to do was not going to turn out as their new captor expected.


	11. Chapter 11

The time passed faster than he anticipated. Their president was even a few moments early. Sukumal stood watching the fat device chiming for a moment before picking it up. He did so slowly, his eyes on Richard Dominguez and the black and white-suited men behind him. "Yes."

Gardner's voice was static-blurred but clear enough to carry to all those Sukumal wanted. "We've done as you asked. The USS Alexander was on a bearing that was bringing it slightly closer to your coast in any case but it's been ordered to head there directly. You can verify that for yourselves I assume. She'll still need a few hours to make port and I want assurances of the safety of the crew."

"Do as they're told and I have no interest in harming your crew," the huge man replied, his dark eyes still scanning the hostages. "When I have confirmation that the missiles are in our control, we will make plans to release the hostages here and you will be given the locations of all the containers of toxin."

"What about yourselves? I assume you have plans you intend to implement to get away?"

"… and I should tell you now so that you can falsely clear our path and establish an ambush. I did not kill the man who came before me to make that kind of stupid mistake."

Gardner, on the far end of the connection was silent for a moment. When he spoke it was quietly and bitterly, an unmistakable edge of defeat in his voice. "I never assumed you were a fool, just that you'd want to discuss clearing that path under your guidelines.'

"The time will come when I will choose to discuss that. For now, I will call you again when the submarine arrives. If you are lying to me, people will start dying and they will stop only when you do give us the compensation we deserve. Is that understood?"

"Very clearly. Go check with your navy." The connection clicked off at the Washington end and Sukumal smiled at the men, defeat and anger and hatred on their faces, powerless before him, all but the older, taller one whose face was resolutely pointed at the ground. "So much for not negotiating with the likes of me, hmph? A man suddenly on his knees before what he thought a weak enemy will do anything." He raised the radio again, this time not bothering to leave. "It is Sukumal. Have they begun moving?" There was a pause and then the smile beneath his mustache grew slowly and twisted. "Excellent. Excellent. How long before it arrives?"

Hearing the answers he wanted, Sukumal Mayuri felt the blood rush through his body as only had once before, the time he had killed, bare-handed the four men who had come, unarmed, to the camp outside the city where Nirmala Hassal and his troops were garrisoned; their intent had been to kill the leader housed there. He had been hired to bring food supplies to the commandeered home, when he was a man with no interest in politics as long as he kept his family alive. He had spotted the four men climbing over the fence and without thinking shouted a warning. Discovered, they had turned on him for their target instead and he'd killed all of them, two of them with one blow, before Hassal's guard's had reached the gate.

An hour later, he not only had enough funds to keep his family alive for ten years, but enough that the politics of his war-ravaged country were now of profitable interest. Sukumal smiled to himself and tossed the satellite radio in the air gently, his huge hand engulfing it as it returned from the air. He could hardly imagine that he was now the man in charge of this operation, one that had taken over a decade to plan and execute, a plan to construct a prime example of all that was corrupt in the United States of America, and then use that example as a trap for those who could (against their will certainly) make Kajananphur a nuclear power that must be dealt with, a way to leverage back against the economic sanctions placed on them for taking the country in hand. The mission was now his, his mark in history was certain, and he would now take his place as the People's Hand. Smiling once again at the men on the floor before him, he returned the satellite phone to its place on the small cabana, never glancing back, never seeing that as he'd tossed the device in the air, his large hands had brushed against the transmission switch and opened the circuit again.

The now open line did not, however, go unnoticed. Tiny, red, and almost concealed beneath a small tumble of decorative silk flowers trimming the support pole of the cabana roof, the light that indicated an open transmission peeked back at CTU Director Bill Buchanan between a clutch of small golden petals. He dropped his head again to conceal a cold and irresistible smile.

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In a basement room of a small home overlooking the Pacific, another tiny light reactivated; a woman's hand, small and dark, on its way up to cancel out the field that would have prevented the communication behind it from connecting stopped its progress. The woman it belonged to glanced behind her and looked for Kathirivan Bhakti. Yana found he was once again seated in the chair far behind them. The radio was still in his hand and in silhouette she could see his head was still pointing down toward it. She could hear nothing but he had intentionally moved out of range before. She could only assume he was remaining so for some reason and not likely a good one. Sighing, wondering what the allegedly perfect men at the other end had done wrong, she turned back to watching the radar screen in front of Patel Amrish and the display showing the positions of their navy as they followed the American submarine toward the main docks of Parresh. Whatever they were talking about, at least that part was still going as planned.

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Morris shifted his weight again, wishing he'd brought a cushion to go with all the electronic equipment. At least his ass against the concrete was the only thing that was cold. Down here at the bottom of the loading dock he was, at least, out of the wind and he was warm enough… by now even the crotch of his trousers had dried even if there was a water stain still on the expensive fabric to remind him of his ex-sister-in-law's latest bout of gleefully childish, if half-heartedly repented behavior.

He looked at his watch, thinking back and calculating the time she'd been in there. He was a quarter of the way through the life of his second battery. O'Brian closed his eyes and figured three hours or so had passed. When he opened them it was to find an icon flashing on the screen of green and blue data he had been sorting and feeding to Manning as he went through the rest of his files between calls to and from Gibson, files of names, places, dates, etc. that might help them put more of the puzzle together… and prove he had had no reason to suspect anything was wrong until the police scanner at his home went ballistic with calls to Culver City. The icon lighting up was the one that monitored the scrambling field around the Cerulean Cove. He watched it flashing for a few seconds to make sure he was sure and then tabbed the earpiece connected to his laptop. "Contact Manning," he ordered.

It took only seconds for the reply. "What is it?"

"Check your readings, Mate. They're not scrambling anything anymore, and they haven't been for ten minutes at least. My computer's telling me it's suddenly got four wireless networks available to it. If you've got people to call, you better move fast."

"We'll take care of things at this end, Mr. O'Brian. If you think this'll last, I'll send in a team to extract you to safety."

Morris thumped his head back against the thick metal door lightly and scowled, tempted even knowing it was pointless. "No way to know that. If it went down it might go back up. We don't know if this is a glitch or something maybe Chloe's done or even a trap."

Curtis sat back and drew a hand across his chin, listening and watching as around him the reports began to come in that the scrambling field around the Cerulean Cove had indeed gone down for who know how long. "All right, thank you. Oh, and that glass company, they're sending us over the specs about the mix they used to construct it and the coatings, and ways we might be able to penetrate it."

"Good… right then. Call me when you know what you're doing and I'll warn Gibson."

"Yeah." Curtis Manning stood up, Aaron Pierce following him as he walked down through the narrow confines of the van, listening at the confirmations coming in that there was no longer an electronic barrier around the building that was preventing their comm devices from working inside. The red-haired young man at the last station, wearing a headset and working four screens at once, glanced behind him at Manning's approach. "It's down and there's a transmission line coming from the building but the last signal we've back-traced on it was about seven minutes ago. We fine-tuned everything and started scanning more frequencies when we heard that man you were talking to say that the scrambling was down. We've found a low-level signal still coming from the fourteenth floor, but it's mostly background noises, a fountain, a cough once in a while, voices but not that often and we haven't found anyone yet who speaks this dialect we're picking up anyway. We haven't had diplomatic relations with Kajananphur for something like ten years. But… if we pick up someone speaking English, the audio ciphers should be able to get a clear signal right away."

"Fourteenth floor still. Hopefully, that means that they haven't moved the bulk of the hostages so we're not hunting for them all over the place." Curtis turned away from the seated man and looked back at Aaron Pierce. "What do you think?"

The older man's narrow but lined brow furrowed for a moment and then relaxed. "I think somebody in there's made a mistake. There's no point setting a trap to free people up on the fourteenth floor. They know and we know it'd take so long to reach them that the hostages would be dead when we got there and they'd likely only do that when they could carry out the rest of their plans; sending a team in blind would just add them to the body count. They're also working with a false sense of security now. They think Gardner's givin' 'em what they want. They don't think they have anything to do but wait."

Curtis stood still for a moment more and then began moving quickly toward the door of the vehicle, as soon as he drew abreast of Pierce the blond man reached out and snagged his arm. "If you're getting ready to send a team in there, I'd like to lead it. I might have left the Marines but they sure as hell didn't leave me and, no offense, these kids I'm seeing look like they could use a commanding officer with a few shaved gray hairs on him."

Manning met the pale eyes across from his own and nodded slowly. "You sure?"

"Semper Fi, Mr. Manning. Let me show our kids and those sons of bitches how it's done."

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The problem, as always, was exactly where to start. This Sukumal, unlike his talkative predecessor, seemed uninterested in engaging in conversations, even with his own men. He was standing in the middle of the room, near the volcano's pond and, strangely enough, feeding the bread from an abandoned tray of finger sandwiches to the massive white and gold koi that circled lazily and slowly under the water lilies. Buchanan stared at the absurd sight for several seconds, wondering if it gave him the edge he needed.

Psychopaths often began their reigns of terror by abusing animals, unable to empathize with their pain only enjoying the power to inflict it because unconsciously they felt they had none unless the victim was absolutely helpless in some way, an animal, a child, or unarmed and smaller. Sukumal seemed to be enjoying himself as he watched the huge fish, however, smiling even when he managed to toss one piece of bread directly into the gaping mouth of the largest of them gathering around the edge of the pond nearest him. Well, if he perhaps wasn't a psychopath, that left purely political motivations and, of course, fame at home… and the wealth that came from running a junta IF he got home. Maybe that was it. … and for now it was all he had regardless.

"I suppose you'll have your own Olympic size pond of those when you get back."

Sukumal Mayuri turned to look at the man who had spoken, the one who had been dealing with Hassal, and shrugged. "I will have the honor of serving my people. I want nothing more. If they choose to reward me, I will not dishonor their generosity."

Buchanan glanced around the room one last time, counting quietly, and tilting his head away from the giant when he did speak, pretending to stare blankly in the direction of the cabana a dozen feet or so from him, hoping to cover his efforts to direct his voice. "I'm sure they will be generous and impressed. You've achieved all this and retaken control of this room with only eight men. Hassal couldn't do that when there were almost twice as many at his disposal and there are only fifty-two of us. I'll give him credit for dividing the men and the women, that's an old trick but it's effective, especially keeping us sitting here directly apart but in view of each other, away from the door. But you're in command here now and I've been in this business long enough to know when we're facing someone who earned a job, and someone who was just took it."

Sukumal tossed the last bit of bread to the swarming, splashing fish and offered the CTU director a teasing bow. "Hassal commands as you said… commanded as you said, but he was also too interested in yammering and playing mind games with people who are tools. So you'll excuse me if I leave. We need to go kill your Mr. Bauer." He turned away from the CTU director with a grunt and walked back over to the window facing west, smirking at the sprawl of emergency vehicles and darkened buildings now surrounding the Cerulean Cove. In a few hours, he would be on his way home. In a few months, the old man was right, he would be watching his elephant drink from the finest fish pond in Southeast Asia.

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Curtis Manning bit back a smile he was afraid to unleash just yet and looked at the earnest green eyes of the young man before him with a measured expression. "You're sure?"

"I ran it through three times as soon as we recorded it. It's Mr. Buchanan."

Curtis Manning looked at the voice pattern analyses in his other hand, all of them well within normal range. Whatever stress Buchanan might have been under he might also was feeling some fairly intense relief that he had likely found a way to get a treasure trove of logistical data out to them, hence the relatively normal reading. … and it would take an incredibly sophisticated bit of trickery to fool him after all these years. "All right, good work, Evans, good work."

Print out in hand, he bolted out of the van and over to the waiting squadron of ordnance and tactical specialists, all standing in a circle around the stout and steady figure of Aaron Pierce. "Hold up; we've got intel from the hostage floor."

Pierce reached for the paper he was extending, reading over the transcript of the intercepted transmission. "Looks like Buchanan's aware there's a leak and took advantage of it."

"He knows he's feeding us. Our job is to get in there before this changes or changes much. Right now we've got two groups of hostages, divided into groups by sex and seated on the floor. We had a count on the political guests but not on the members of the press and the staff who weren't involved so we don't know how many of each. We've got nine hostiles including the man he was talking to and we can assume since they wouldn't have put hostages near the exit that the men and the women are grouped here and here if they've been placed directly apart from one another," he finished, hastily drawing two juxtaposed Xs on the diagram Evans had made as the he'd analyzed the recording. The Xs were roughly each 90 degrees from the door. "They may even be a few short of that since the man speaking said "we" when he talked about going to kill Jack."

Pierce read the statements again. "And our hostiles have had their own problems. Sounds like the one who answered Buchanan might have killed his superior officer."

"After the problems Jack and Chloe have caused them, I don't doubt it. It make sense to these kind of people, and for now, we can assume they're still alive, Martha and Cassie, too. If he'd managed to kill any of them, especially Martha, I think it's likely he would have been bragging about it." Manning glanced at the building towering over them several blocks away. He reached up to the multi-channel comm in his ear. "Contact Griffin."

"Here, Sir."

"Marcus, we have fresh intel on what's happening right now inside that building. If those kids can't hack in there within the next ten minutes, we're taking our chances being spotted going in the front door. What's their status?"

"Hold on, Sir." The next words he spoke were, of course, directed at the three young men from Cal-Tech who had been recruited from their jail cells. Not wired against Griffin's jawbone, their replies were indistinct but brief and Griffin was back in less than a minute. "Sir, he says we can get in there anytime, we just run a risk of them detecting the break in security circuit. They've got the risk down to 15 but now one of them says that he thinks he's figured out the sequence it runs the checks on, so we can take it from a 15 chance they'll see the door opening for more than three seconds to a 10 or 12 chance if we can slip in in between rounds."

"Okay, we're going take that chance. I want you to be prepared to break down operations there as soon as those doors are breached."

"Yes, Sir. One thing, Sir?"

"Go ahead."

"Permission to join the strike team, Sir?"

Manning hesitated, knowing Griffin's fondness for Jack Bauer but also that he was the senior operative at his location. "I'm sorry, Marcus. I need you to get those civilians to safety. They've put themselves in danger and done a good job for us. We're obligated to getting them out of harm's way. You'll be on the next teams we send in to do search and recovery."

"Yes, Sir. I understand. Good luck."

Manning turned back to Pierce as he folded the transcript and tucked it back into his leg pocket. "When you're in position call me. We have one more piece of information to put in place and that's whatever the hell Jack has done to that north stairwell. We'll get a couple of choppers up in the air and keep an eye on the roof. Are you ready?"

Pierce nodded, his pale eyes moving over the twenty-five heavily armed young men watching him closely. "Absolutely."

"Then get going. Call me when you're ready to cross into their view. We've got a diversion ready that's been on stand-by."

Pierce nodded and turned back to his men. "All right! This is it! Move out. Keep sharp." They turned as one, heading at a run toward the Cerulean Cove as the darkest part of the night fell over the city.

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Morris O'Brian shut the link down with a scowl and hoped Manning knew what the hell his men would be doing. He glanced up at the building above him and then up at the top of the family-run car rental agency across the street, thinking furiously about what Manning had reported as far as the three young men working on expanding the time interval that would let them open the service door for more than three seconds. He'd mentioned being able to anticipate the cycle the system checked the lock sequences on and that they were able, predicting it, to have taken 2 to 3 off the chance that the teams would be detected. Something was worrying at him now, something that the younger man's inspired bit of prognostication had inspired.

The wheels turned a few minutes more before the light dawned. Damn. Of course. It might gain them only 3 or four more percent but an eight or nine percent chance that they would be able to get in undetected was better than 15, 12 or even 10. He reached up to the comm. "Contact…". What the hell was that kid's name?

The comm unit's tiny program waited five seconds before admonishing him. "Command incomplete."

"Contact… Agh… Damn it."

"'Damn it' is not a valid contact."

"Well, then damn you!"

"Command not found. Please state a valid command."

Morris resisted the temptation to crunch the small device against the wall. He glared at the screen in front of him, and then quietly, surreptitiously, far outside his blackmailed-into-existence mission parameters, and, of course, completely illegally, entered the programming matrix of the CTU operations center and scanned the active deployment grid. It took him only moments to find the one he was on, obviously the largest deployment in the city. He narrowed it down to the positions of each individual and gave the earpiece a victorious tap. "Contact Griffin." He bit back a smile to save for later, when he was telling Melanie and Eliza and Monica about all, well, some of this (none of them at the same time, of course).

"This is Agent Griffin. Who is this?"

"This is that guy who does NOT exist across the street. I need to talk to whoever's breaking the time sequence on the security system and I do NOT have time to through channels. The lives of the team going into this hotel and maybe a lot of other people could depend on you putting me on with him right now."

Griffin hesitated, looking across the street at the downward slope of the truck ramp, and then down at the three young programmers, and finally back at the Cerulean Cove, thinking of those inside who were relying on CTU for their rescue, the Senators, the Speaker of the House, dozens of others and a man who had so recently become his teacher. This was an off-protocol field call. Those dozens of lives, maybe hundreds might be in his hands. The unidentified man across the street knew the team was coming already, the young men before him would have no way of knowing if what they were about to be told would betray them but his gut was telling him that the time had come to think on his feet, that wasting time would waste lives. Instinct overcame the rules, instinct more powerful than the voice of any superior he'd had so far. "Okay, …just hold on."

The next voice O'Brian heard didn't fill him with confidence. "Uh, this is Ito Hirokawa. Who are you?"

"Nevermind. Stop what you're doing. The program to expand that time window, forget it. All you need to do is hack the timer itself. Slow down the scanning interval across the board. Set it back about 20. Can you do that?"

"Well, geez, I'm already in there. Sure." Keys clacked over the open comm in rapid succession, followed by a snorting breath. "Crap, man, I shoulda' thought of this myself. Don't slow down one horse, slow down the race. Effin'cool."

"Just shut up and do it. How long will it take?"

"About two minutes easy, Your Highness. Chill. That it or do you want G.I. Joe again?"

Morris O'Brian slumped back against the metal doorway and ran a hand over his face as he shook his head. "Yeah, yeah, I want G.I. Joe back… and Kid, good job."

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Unconscious, gagged, and bound with rope they had found with the work ladder still in the service corridor, three men in desert camouflage lay behind the front desk of the Cerulean Cove, one bleeding from a bullet wound to the shoulder, one with a knee at an stomach-turning angle, and all marked with facial bruises that were clearly the violent imprints of human fists. Not far from them was a pile of pillaged weapons and ammunition, taken from each one as he was captured. Chloe O'Brian stood guard over them mutely, her eyes on the digital clock beside the orderly rows of room cards and message boxes, thinking how pointless it was to even look at it. They were running out of time without knowing how much they had but they had succeeded with their goal. The north stairwell was now inaccessible all the way up to the level of the hostages. They had narrowed down the avenue of anyone reaching the lobby to one doorway.

Chloe looked up when she heard two pairs of foot falls, one sharper than the others, Martha Logan's she knew without even looking. She was leading, at gunpoint, another captive before her, one whose steps were markedly unsteady. The sleeves were cut off of his uniform, one was binding his wrists, the other was serving as a gag. Going by the amount of saliva soaking it, it had been there for some time. When he lowered himself unsteadily to the floor next to the tumble of the others, Chloe saw a pair of fang-like burn marks at the back of his neck.

Martha Logan lowered the gun as he flopped down to his knees, still keeping it in her hand and standing well back. "Your sister said she'd left him behind the vending machines."

Chloe nodded and looked toward the doorway just visible under the waterfall designed stairway. Her sister and Jack stood on either side of it, having captured each of the first three men in succession as they came down to see what the problem was with the other stairwell. As Jack had hoped, each of them seemed to have assumed that the fire doors had been sealed by their own superiors to aid in capturing Jack and the others, to herd them toward a trap, an assumption all but confirmed by the looks and shrugs they had given each other when Jack had brought them over here then knocked each of them out. She looked back at the man Logan had just brought over and then up to see Jack on his way over to them. Logan raised a hand to stop him and with a tired, almost bored, expression, slammed the butt of her pistol into the side of the new arrival's head. Bauer stood in his tracks, staring blankly for a moment, then offered Martha a thin, tired smile before turning back to the doorway.

Gibson looked up as he closed on her. "Did Chloe…?"

"Martha, actually. That's the only one you left?"

Gibson didn't answer him for a moment, her eyes going to Martha Logan and widening slightly. "Alive… yeah. So, uh… it…. Martha? She's like so not what I expected."

Jack ran hand over his face and gave a tired lift of his brow. "She never is if you only know her from the news. I had to trust her with my life, with everything about her husband and she turned on him, on all she'd ever known until that day and came through. I couldn't let them kill her, not when there was a chance Chloe would get…." He leaned against the wall, exhaustion closing on him not seeing Gibson shake her head and smile.

"Let it go, Jack. Whatever exactly happened, there's not one thing my sister would have had you do differently."

He looked up then, his eyes going to the small woman across the lobby holding a gun at the bound men on the floor, "I know that and it scares the hell out of me."

"And even in the middle of this, I love hearing that because it tells me how much she means to you." She returned his sudden smile, then upended it. "And at the other end of that moral compass… time to call Morris?"

"You do it." An expression of distaste tightened Bauer's narrow mouth. He was probably figuring, and rightly, that she had developed a heartier tolerance for him over the years - even under these circumstances. Bauer's eyes went back to the south stairwell door as she reached for the comm.

"Morris?"

"Right here, Darling. I was about to call you. Team's in place."

"Fine. We're ready."

"Right. You've got two minutes and just so you know – they won't be going in blind; Buchanan's slipped out some intel out from upstairs."

"Great. Fine. Same door?"

"Yeah, and wherever all this is tied into, they shouldn't know we're coming."

Gibson opened her mouth to answer, then stopped, and in the next moment reconsidered. "Good job."

The pause at the other end of the was even longer and O'Brian's voice was quiet and tense when the silence ended. "Thanks." The words that came after that one came quickly, however, and caught her slightly off-guard. "One other thing, Cass'… I… I'm sorry." The comm went dead.

Jack looked over at Gibson as a hissed-in breath escaped her in a single huff. "Something wrong?"

"We're all going to die: he apologized."

"Little late for that as far as you're concerned."

"I don't care one way or the other, Kiddo. He showed up, cut his deal, and I just thought of him like any other snitch. Oh, by the way, if you try to go up with them once that team gets in here, I'll knock you on your pretty ass and sit on you. You're the best thing that's ever happened to my sister, especially compared to the company sitting down in the loading ramp outside."

The thin smile that had come to Bauer's face as she issued her warning faded as she finished. "That's where Morris is?"

"You were right. He didn't know it was this bad but he was involved with the people who built this place. When he found out Chloe was in here he suddenly decided he had to run my information to Curtis himself through a hardline past the interference. So if this place blows, he goes, too." From the expression on her face Bauer could tell, apology or not, that the idea bothered her not at all.

While he wanted to know more, now wasn't the time. The nightmare around them overtook his thoughts again. "Let's fall back. We don't want to be in the way." Gibson nodded and obeyed, following his movements as he began backing toward the front desk.

They were three feet from it when the door out of the south stairwell exploded open, disgorging eight men and the giant who had captured him and Chloe after they had escaped the initial round-up of the hostages. They returned fire immediately, making it behind the desk before Gibson was slammed back against the wall and dropped unmoving to the ground. Jack moved to duck down behind the counter even before Chloe screamed behind him, returning up from cover with the gun Gibson had dropped in his other hand. Only three of the men were still continuing to fire. The rest were spreading out to head for the north door, presumably having realized that the stairwell was now sealed off and they had been bottle necked all the way up to the level of the hostages, and of course, that he was to blame. Their arrival in the lobby meant that they were likely assuming, deed done, that he might now be headed for the escape the shot-open lobby door had earlier implied.

The three men firing at Jack had taken cover behind the huge curving stairwell and a concrete and steel planter directly across from him. He kept firing in both directions as he glanced quickly at the others heading for the north door, diving down behind the counter as the almost unconscious count he was keeping on both guns told him he was a few shots away from being out of ammunition in both. Martha Logan was in his face as he dropped, offering him two already loaded weapons that he took in both hands. She reached down and took another one in her own. "I can't shoot this thing other than point blank but if you give me a general direction I'll try and help."

Jack nodded. "Stay on my left and stay low. If you're visible at all be firing. Move back out from the desk a little and you won't have as far to go up to shoot over it." He watched as she scooted back, went to her knees, and the opened fire, learning quickly to adjust for the recoil but pulling down on her wrist even as the gun bucked upward. The seeking fire that had been hammering around them stopped for a moment, long enough for Bauer to look over at Chloe as she knelt by her sister against the dark blue wall, her own weapon aimed at the opening through which Jack and Chloe had originally joined them. "Chloe!"

Wild-eyed, her hair in strings around her face, Chloe snapped toward him, tears on her face. She nodded once and quickly, letting him know that her sister was still alive. Bauer turned back, raising up to fire again when a half-dozen flash-bang grenades exploded into the lobby, thrown from somewhere behind them. Before the noise had even faded Jack had tackled Martha Logan and thrown her to ground beneath him, catching sight of Chloe throwing herself over her sister as he did.

The firing over their heads continued only for as long as it took the outside ordnance and assault personnel to move fully into the lobby, taking out two of the armed men from Kajananphur instantly but finding they were out flanked by the five who had proceeded toward the north stairwell. Two of the CTU men fell to their shots as they fired across the width of the lobby, having taken cover behind more of the concrete planters that held fully grown palm trees. They were soon displaced, however, by the second squadron of men who slipped through the front doors. It was over in seconds; bodies in three different styles of camouflage lay strewn across the lobby, five of them cut down from behind as they'd headed for the blocked stairwell.

Jack Bauer lay crouched against the silence, the sequins of Martha Logan's gown biting into his hands and the side of his face. She realized before he that the danger was over, lifting her head as a half-dozen pair of black boots came into her vision. She waved back the man reaching down for Bauer and brought her arms beneath her, slowly pushing up off the floor. Jack responded without a word, sliding back and then off of her as she came to sit by his side on the ground. She gestured slowly at the men around them in CTU fatigues and then held his gaze. "It's over, Sweetheart. The cavalry's here."

Bauer stared into her eyes for a moment more before managing a smile and a weak nod of his head. He glanced at the men around them and took a deep breath, staggering to his feet by holding onto the bullet-ridden counter. He extended a hand to help her up and found a gentle hand pulling back his arm, pushing him slightly to the right. "That's my job, Jack. Should've been here before to do it."

"I'm glad you weren't. You would've gotten yourself killed long before now, you idiot." Martha pulled herself upright and into Aaron Pierce's outstretched arms. Jack turned a brief smile at them and escaped the hand Martha quickly laid on his arm to get past the small clutch of men now behind the counter, shaking off the shock and heading to where he was most needed now.

Chloe was on her feet when he reached her, having been torn between heading toward him and leaving her sister. There was a medic kneeling beside Gibson on the floor, however, opening a medical kit and shooing the others back. Chloe was back on her knees a moment later, not sure if she had collapsed or Bauer had as his arms closed around her.

They kissed with a raw need that had nothing to do with love or sex but a desire for simple proof that the other was alive and safe. O'Brian twisted her hands into the fabric of his tattered shirt and rode the moment out even as Bauer's head fell to her shoulder and his tongue tasted the nectar of the bitter sweat and oil of her skin. Only moments passed, however, before reality settled back upon them. Chloe heaved a sigh and lifted her head only to have another harsh assault begin.

"Damn it! What …? Get that light out of my eyes, you moron. I'm sorry I'm not shot for you but blind is not the substitute plan."

Already laughing, Chloe turned toward her sister, finding her in mid-swat at the startled and unappreciated medic . She leaped toward her sister and embraced her, ignoring the growling murmur of groans and curses as she returned the embrace. Jack wedged a hand in and pulled her back, suddenly aware of the pain Gibson must be feeling. "You're okay then?"

Gibson pushed her sister back with a smirk and wiped the tears from her face. "Except for being pissed at myself and sorry I missed everything." She released her sister and reached down to the hem of the sweater. "This is usually a one-man show, Jack, consider yourself lucky." She snatched the sweater off to reveal the vest beneath it, grinning when she saw the relief on the face of her sister, joined by confirmed suspicion on Jack's. She dug three compact and blunted bullets out of the Kevlar but her gaze left them narrowed onto Chloe's in the next instant, her eyebrows arching up. "You didn't think I was this… this… fat, did you?"

O'Brian snarled and struck away the last of her tears. "No, I was too busy thinking you were insane!"

Jack shifted his weight suddenly, pushing himself to his feet by way of a hand suddenly clamped over both of their mouths. "Not now, both of you." He swallowed a smile nevertheless, and kissed the top of Gibson's head before he slowly moved off.

Giggling as she watched him go, Gibson pulled her sister down as she rose to follow him, the affection in her voice carrying a tone of seriousness. "Forget the damn terrorists, any man with guts enough to shut me up with his bare hands, you better damn sight keep him, Monkey-Butt; you better damn sight keep him."

Jack found Aaron Pierce again, knowing full well in the sea of young faces who was in charge of the force now swarming over the lower floor. Martha was standing next to him, no doubt having no intention of leaving until the others were safe. Her hair was a mess, of course. Her bloodstained gown filthy and tattered and somehow, she still looked regal. Pierce was having a small bit of trouble not looking at her every few seconds as he received reports from the ordnance team already at the site of the first bomb at bomb on the lowest level. Pierce turned toward Bauer, lowering the radio as he finished the last round of reports.

"Can't imagine what it's been like in here for you, Jack. Gonna' be a hell of a debrief, but before all that – I want to thank you. This little lady told me you've been looking out for all of the people you had with you and laying the groundwork in here. These kids are gonna' learn a lot from you."

Jack's gaze dropped to the floor for a moment and then lifted as Chloe came up from behind him at tucked herself under his arm. He kissed the side of her head and was about to rest his cheek on it but she suddenly leaned forward. "I need your radio, Mr. Pierce. I did something really bad to buy us some time."

"You mean Wells Fargo? It's being handled through diplomatic channels, Miss Chloe. No need to worry. They said you gave them everything they needed to retrieve the money, too, but they've not done it yet. Had to wake a few people up but nobody's too upset."

"Really? Gee, I must be getting rusty." Chloe sighed, sharing a dim smile with Bauer as she rested her head onto his shoulder. "When can we get out of here? My feet are killing me."

"It won't be long. I promise." Bauer pulled her closer but was still taking in the extent of the force in the lobby and the swarm of men surrounding the stack of bodies they were making, the first fangs of true exhaustion sinking their teeth into his tight frame. "Aaron, what about the hostages upstairs? Are you going to be able to get a team in there before they're harmed?"

Aaron Pierce glanced at his watch and a thin smile suddenly pulled at his thin lips. "We've got that under control we think. Should start just about… now."

His timing was off slightly. A few seconds passed before what he was hinting at occurred, loudly and clearly, mostly loudly. A massive but muffled explosion reached their ears, one outside the building by a few blocks. Pierce's calm expression didn't change much except to offer a reassuring smile to Jack, Chloe, and Martha as the sound began to fade.

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The plume of fire erupting up from the twisted and scarred frame of the tractor trailer brightened the sky brilliantly if briefly, but long enough that the eight remaining men guarding the hostages bolted from their posts around the room and ran to the wall-sized windows overlooking West Century Boulevard. Bunched up against the clear surface they began after a few seconds to glance back at their charges and make a reminding wave of their weapons. Two police cars were behind the burned out and still smoldering frame of the semi-truck and more were joining them but so far were just letting it burn. To every appearance the truck had run the perimeter that had been set up and CTU had taken what they regarded as a necessary measure to stop it. At least that was the assumption. It lasted long enough for the helicopter on the opposite side of the Cerulean Cove to suddenly drop in close enough to the windows.

Bill Buchanan looked away from the direction of the explosion just in time to see a helicopter drop down from the airspace above them and he sat torn for a split second, wanting to keep safe those around him by yelling a warning or preserve even the briefest intervals of the element surprise for the attack that was imminent. He kept silent by the end of the tiny moment, trusting that his people knew what they were doing and sure, by the exacting angle of their approach, that his data had gotten through and they were attacking with a clear path of fire between themselves and the bunched hostage takers.

He threw himself down as a hail of weaponsfire erupted through the shattering windows, the sound of it overwhelming the screams of the hostages. Already seated on the floor, they gave the CTU troopers that almost perfectly clear path of fire to the group of men clustered near the far window, clear enough that two of them went with it down the opposite side of the tower as the glass shattered outward. Two of the men, however, were far enough away to escape the immediate field of fire, kept tight to avoid striking the cowering and screaming hostages. Buchanan watched them flee with a rush of anger and turned his attention back to the chopper hanging just outside the blown open window. He leapt up as soon as the firing stopped, waving at the three men brandishing sniper rifles out the side of the hovering air craft. He moved as close to the blown open window as he dared, removing his coat as he did, waving it in circles to gain the attention of the CTU agents. The closest one to his position removed his helmet and dropped it to the deck of the chopper, snagging up a pair of binoculars to get a better look at him.

Buchanan sighed with relief when he saw he had their attention. He tossed the coat aside and extended his arms before him then snapped them up into the position they would be in if he were also holding one of the rifles they were carrying. The man nearest him understood immediately. He unloaded the mostly empty clip and slapped in a full one, then waved the other men back to gain some room to build up the force he would need to throw the rifle across the 14 story void between them. It landed with a thud several feet inside the shot open window. The man who had thrown it held up a hand for Buchanan to wait and then pitched over two more full clips.

Bill moved in and snatched both the weapon and the ammunition into his hands, then moved into the center of the room. "Everyone, your attention please. Please!"

The room settled down quickly, turning to look at the armed figure who now, finally, was on their side. Bill Buchanan turned in a small circle to address them all as they came to their feet or moved to attend the wounded. "I need all of you to stay here. Obviously help is on the way and this is over but we'll need some time to get you all out of here in an organized, safe manner. Just try and relax, start caring for the wounded, and I'll have people sent up here as soon as possible."

He dropped the rifle into his hands and checked it as the crowd resumed chattering and collecting themselves. Some of the women were openly weeping. One of them had lost consciousness. Buchanan took one last look as he headed toward the door back out into the hallway and saw Speaker of the House Dominguez embracing his wife. The smile it brought to his face faded as he reached the door and slid through it, scanning the empty, blue-carpeted hallway. A few seconds later he heard a voice, an angry one, coming from the stairwell at the end of the hall, the north one, muted but loud enough to reach his ears. He raised the rifle and moved forward slowly.

When he reached the door, however, it was another matter. Rifle ready, he kicked it open and fired. The voices of the two men who had fled became louder and more alarmed as they shouted at each other. Several poorly aimed shots sailed past him from the stairwell beneath him but the voices instantly grew fainter as the sound of footsteps retreating downward began again. Buchanan stood frozen, listening carefully, determining that both men were still fleeing downward. His back against the outer wall, he descended the concrete steps with the rifle pointed downward.

He came upon the first doorway where they had stopped and, seeing what they had found, stopped himself, staring at the sight that must have vexed them and set them to shouting angrily. As much as it meant that they were trapped in here with him, it also meant that the escape route was cut off and the CTU team coming up would run no chance of being caught in a crossfire.

Around the pushbar of the lock on the inside were three bundles of white cloth, wound tightly and compactly, wound thickly enough that they were preventing the bar from being depressed and thus the door from opening. They were too thick to cut through without considerable effort and effort that would have to have been expended three times. Buchanan brushed his hands over the compact and dense bundle, staring at it curiously as the pieces quickly put themselves together and lead right to one conclusion: Jack. He and the others had blocked of the north stairwell with something as simple as binding the locks. The huge knots around them had been fashioned by winding the hotel bed sheets over and over into a dense wad that prevented the handle from being depressed.

A cold, appreciative smile on his face, Buchanan moved downward again, cornering his quarry at the door that led out to the lobby. They saw him coming this time, no longer needing to keep their gaze focused on the concrete beneath them as they charged. He dropped back as they began to fire upwards, switching the clip to a full one in under ten seconds and firing randomly at first just to disorient his prey. The deafening sounds of firing and ricochets filled the tight space with an explosion of pure noise… a clanging, numbing din that made the silence of death moments later even more profound. His ears ringing, Bill Buchanan slung his rifle back over his shoulder and slid down the wall of the stairwell, enjoying his first free breaths in far, far too many hours.

He sat for only a few minutes, however, hearing the familiar commotion of orders and footfalls out in the lobby. Of course, thanks to Jack, the only way to get there now, without cutting through a rock hard bundle of four-hundred thread count percale, was to cross over to the south stairwell and join his men from there. Pulling himself up, Buchanan gave the two dead men one last glance before jogging up the stairs to the landing and heading across the second floor.


	12. Chapter 12

Change in plans everyone :-). Where I planned to have this wrapped up in one chapter, I've opted for a final two.

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He almost missed it because of the Aleutians, the island chain that trailed back from the western coast of Alaska, the northern edge of the Pacific ring of fire. On the old world map that carpeted the lobby of the Cerulean Cove, they were white and gray, outlined in black, against the blue, stormy, and dangerous North Pacific. Jack had seen footage of the men who plied those waters fishing and crabbing, and for a brief time enjoyed the perspective of thinking there were jobs in the world that made his seem comparatively safe. Frigid, fifty-foot waves and hundred mile an hour winds couldn't be out-shot, out-thought, or bribed, nor would they bargain for immunity or information; they came with one option, live and be lucky… or die.

At the moment, in a heated, luxury hotel some four thousand miles south of the real Aleutians, someone was on his way toward the same possible fates, and with similar odds.

Letting his nerves settle, needing some distance to begin to accept that those he cared about had survived, to take in the sight of the hostages being rounded up and checked and given blankets, coffee, and food, and to find the still point with himself that not even Chloe could guide him to, Jack had left her with Cassie and walked away from the milling crowd. Numb and exhausted, he climbed half-way up the broad stairway and sat down, leaning against the cold, slightly lumpy railing intended to look like natural, smooth rocks along a river. The cold stone cleared his head and when he opened his eyes, he saw it, a trail of purple streaks, three of them, on a rug that showed the color no where else… purple on blue. He'd spent to long with Kim fingerpainting as a child not to know that the only way to get purple when there was blue… was red. Like the sea it depicted, the carpet near the Aleutians had been tainted with blood.

The streaks led away from the lobby. No one wounded had been brought through the doors facing southwest. Jack returned his gun to his hand and stood, glancing at the welcome chaos of officials and med-techs and troops scattered through the lobby that was now a triage center. He was probably crazy, probably paranoid to wonder if one of them had gotten away. The bodies of the men who had attacked them were now covered with white sheets, many of which had soaked through with blood, seven bodies in all. Jack stared, eyes burning and gritty, at the lobby floor, screening out the ruckus around the corpses, waiting for a break in the crowd to count them again. A second later he bolted down the stairs and vaulted over the last few yards of the railing, panic restoring his energy for the moment.

Eight. There had been eight. One of them had survived. Jack bolted to the beginning of the trail of blood, following it first with his eyes toward the service hallways that lead to the western side. Smeared and repeated, as if several attempts had been needed to get hold of it, handprints covered the frame and the face of the first door, left by a palm covered in blood. Jack closed on the door and then stopped, looking back, remembering that, now - there was help. In the next moment, however, he knew the best way to find the one who had escaped was not to send a cordon of troops barreling after him, forcing him preemptively into whatever, likely fatalistic, action he was now almost certainly determined to make. Torn, well aware that there were still two layers of explosives being dealt with, to say nothing of whatever might be triggered in New York, Jack stood thinking for several moments, his thoughts slowed by the exhaustion beginning to reassert itself. The answer came a moment later, as the second team swept into the lobby, led by his prize student this year so far.

Griffin waved the rest of his men inside the now open (with the exception of the one that was simply shattered) glass doors but himself stopped at the threshold, his sharp young eyes sweeping the expanse of the place until he caught sight of Jack Bauer. The moment their eyes met, Bauer jerked his head back, a finger to his lips and signaled to join him. Griffin, his rifle balanced in his arms moved instantly in Bauer's direction, mouth shut and his eyes giving no sign that he had been asked in the direction he was taking. He drew up short next to Bauer.

"Something's up, Sir?"

"I need you to get a few of your men, ones you know who can move quietly. One of these bastards has gotten away but he's wounded. He's probably trying to find a way to communicate with whoever's in charge of this operation on the outside that this done for them. We can't risk him taking things into his own hands or triggering that toxin… if he hasn't already."

Griffin nodded. "They haven't neutralized that threat yet, Mr. Bauer, but they are in place."

"Damn, all right. And let's just keep this quiet for now. I can't risk whoever's gotten away from here panicking. Bring in whoever you need, six people maybe seven."

Marcus nodded solemnly, hoping like hell that Bauer couldn't see that blush of pride that was coloring his face. There was no sign that he had until Griffin had turned from him and headed back to the others then a small but genuine smile that would have embarrassed the younger man moved slowly across his instructor's face.

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"Is that how many there were?"

Aaron Pierce pointed at the seven bodies on the floor of the Cerulean Cove, staining the carpet brownish red where it displayed South Africa and the Cape of Good Hope. Cassandra Gibson rubbed a hand over her face. "It was about that many. I took three slugs in my vest and ended up checking out at the front desk. Speaking of which… thank you for choosing the Cerulean Cove for your stay in the Greater Los Angeles area."

Gibson pulled the grin back and winced at the dumbfounded stare being directed at her by the former Secret Service agent to whom little was funny under the circumstances. His expression of disapproving shock melted with confusion when a brief fit of exhausted, shocky giggling erupted from Martha Logan. The warring emotions on his face faded at the sound of her laughter and Gibson let the smile return slightly to her own and scanned the room for her sister, glancing up at the stairway with certainty that she would have joined Jack after giving him enough time alone to collect himself. Chloe was unlikely at the moment to have much patience with that particular need of his that surfaced on occasion.

The stairway was empty, a fact with surprised her at first and then grew slowly to alarm as she glanced around quickly and saw then just barely heard Chloe making a long, complex, stumbling explanation and apology to Bill Buchanan who was looking down at her like a grandfather, with a fondness that was escaping her completely. By now, Buchanan obviously knew that the best thing to do for Chloe was to let her get it off her chest until she ran out of steam and said all she felt she needed to or it would continue in snippets and torrents until she did for days or weeks to come. Gibson stumbled back and caught herself as a man bolted past her to Pierce and quickly explained that they had found the second bomb inside a volcano on the fourteenth floor and deactivated it. This time she stared, and with effort bit her tongue; figuring, in terms of Pierce, she'd filled her quota of clever remarks at one.

Distracted only for a moment, she gave up wondering about indoor geological oddities and resumed looking for Bauer, sincerely wondering if he'd passed out somewhere or been carried out by the paramedics. Next job then, find him. Her next priority after that would be to get to Curtis, find a hotel out of the terrorist district and spend several nights making up for this one. She took on last glance back at Chloe and was relieved to find her sitting on the counter of the front desk in her shredded dress, with a laptop in her grasp and Bill Buchanan at her side, nodding at a stream of chatter he was probably only barely following. Well, Jack wasn't in the crowd; the next guess was that he'd gone to get away from it and then she would check with the EMTs. Hell, with a radio she could do that now while she….

"Detective."

Gibson turned, smiling with vague recognition. "Marvin… Marshall… Mar…?"

"Marcus."

"Right, sorry. Look, tell Curtis -- Manning, I'm not ready to leave. I'm looking for Jack."

The young man's voice suddenly dropped and he closed the distance between them tightly. "He sent me to round up some of my men, but we're going to be looking for someone without raising any alarms. One of them got away. I remember you from the Pavilion so thought you might…."

His voice trailed off as an expression best described as feral twisted the blond woman's face, replaced by a grimace of resignation. Cassie unexpectedly thought of Kimberly Bauer, Jack's daughter, and her quiet, tired, always unanswered question of why it had to be her father… and the unhappy answer that was all she or they ever got, that fate simply seemed to demand that it did. "I owe you a drink, Kid. Let's go."

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The last cable clattered to the ground with a small click, freeing the laptop from its hardline connection to the CTU network. Brushing off his freezing backside, Morris O'Brian came to his feet slowly and stiffly, having been afraid to move more than needed even though hidden from sight. He'd done it, lived up to his part of both bargains, gotten them inside as far as CTU was concerned, and made sure Chloe was safe, the deal he'd made with himself. It was up to them now; they could find whoever was responsible and if there was continued anonymity, he might be persuaded to give up a few more bits of evidence, maybe testify in secret. If the bastards had finished, if things had gone differently, he would have woken up tomorrow to find he'd helped to enable the deaths of millions, no matter if it had been in ignorance. He owed them back for that. Laundered money was one thing…

Morris pulled the hood of his jacket up and, hugging the wall that angled down to the still-sealed parking garage, following it with a slightly nervous eye as he ascended and the wall shortened. He stopped when his head drew just above street level and searched for where he could best slip out of the area unnoticed, even if that meant abandoning the rental car still back near the roadblocks. He hadn't crossed off the pavement before a hand latched around his arm and removed the laptop in the same instant. He froze and closed his eyes, startled momentarily but not frightened and unsurprised to see Curtis Manning, in full field gear, beside him, handing the laptop over to a young, athletic Hispanic man in fatigues.

Morris didn't move his arm, but his head snapped up. He then glanced down that the large hand around restraining him as the hood of his jacket fell back. "We had a deal."

"We had a deal we wouldn't press charges, not that you get to back out on your terms. I want you on the computers in there, to see if you can help us get a lead on who else is involved here before that toxin is dumped in New York. Get moving."

This time Morris balked, holding his ground as he was shoved forward. "I can't go in there. I can't have… Chloe is in there, Manning. Have a little mercy. I'll do what you want from--."

"I don't have time for your personal problems and you've had your fun with your little personal vendetta. As for Chloe, she might be able to help if she's in any condition to, and you'll work with her if she is."

"Of course, this has nothing to do with you personally either, does it?"

Manning offered the stocky man a debilitating glare and tightened his grip to the point where it was near to leaving marks. "Move. Now."

Knowing better than to resist, he started forward, comforted only by the fact that his arm now free of the computer was also free to yank the hood back up over his head. If ever he'd felt sympathy with a fly waiting for the spider to arrive it was as he was propelled toward the shot open and locked open doors of the Cerulean Cove and the chaos inside. This was hardly how he'd expected to spend his first night here; no suite, no hot tub, no catered meal, no masseuse, no… Giselle in that red number he'd seen in the window at Fredericks. As they crossed over the threshold and were absorbed into the chaos, the hope that he could avoid Chloe, her sister, or Bauer went up slightly. There were now nearly 100 people in the lobby and the number was slowly growing. Manning came to a stop and released him. "Where do we go? Are there computers you remember aside from the one in the security office?"

"No." O'Brian raised his head enough to look up and get his bearings. "It's through there. Down the corridor and fifth door on the left. We'll need to bypass the security lock on the door. I'll need at least ten minutes"

"We don't have time for that." Manning looked away from the British man, raising his voice to address the crowd "Anyone on Tac-Three, I need a Level 2 controlled detonation!"

Four young men immediately turned and headed in Manning's direction, three backing off when they realized which of them was nearest and he waved them off. "Watkins, Sir. What are we doing?"

"Get us in the fifth door on the left."

"Yes, Sir."

It was less than three minutes later that a small explosion from a shaped charge just large enough to take out the heavy door thumped through the building, eliciting a few screams that were soon silenced by the CTU team members and associates who were still in the lobby being triaged or debriefed reassured the rest.

Chloe O'Brian, still perched on the lip of the front desk, merely twitched and winced slightly as the detonation sounded, having heard Manning and knowing full well what a Level 2 would be when it went off. Nevertheless, she instinctively glanced in the direction of the explosion, and did a quick double-take the instant her eyes went back to the screen before her. She focused on the figure next to Curtis, a quick lump of shock forming in her gut as the suspicions of her passing glance were confirmed. Morris. She knew the slope of his shoulders even beneath the otherwise shapeless gray, hooded jacket. The fact that the hood was up only confirmed her suspicions.

Bill Buchanan looked up from the screen of the cell phone in his hand as Chloe returned the laptop to the counter of the front desk. Seeing that she intended to jump back down to the floor, he offered his hands and helped her to return to her feet. She smiled a quick "thank you" up at him then a moment later was lost in maelstrom a conflicting emotions, none of them good and undecided which of them she would give into first. She finally realized none of them were going to win and, still immersed in the whirlpool, made her way over to the perimeter of the hallway out of which a few trails of smoke and dust still drifted. Before she knew what she was doing herself, she stopped dead in front of her ex-husband and in the same moment yanked the hood back from his face.

Morris O'Brian met her eyes for only an instant before they closed in preparation and stood stock still as the powerful blow he expected landed across his left cheek. Manning didn't even turn to watch, making an effort to ignore the whole scene for two reasons, one – he thoroughly approved of, much less understood, Chloe's actions and, two, he thought it best, as a figure of authority here to give the situation as little attention as possible. His men had been trained to regard as important and pay attention to the things that he did; the less relevance he gave to the proceedings the better. Regardless of her quirks, every operative in the room had a soft spot for Chloe, because they knew when they were in the field she was their best of hope coming home alive.

Morris remained silent as his stinging face reddened and kept his eyes on the oak-beam ceiling intended to look like the roof of the hold of a ship. When he moved a moment later, it was only to shift his weight and tilt his head to better expose the side that hadn't been struck. "Go on, then. Get it over with, Lass."

Chloe O'Brian stood frozen, her world narrowed down to the man in front of her and the intractable but unfocussed rage she was feeling. No matter what his personal failings that had lead him here, no matter that he'd used, in a twisted way, the love between herself and her sister and her sister's sense of duty, no matter that he'd probably only agreed to help if he would face no charges, she knew him well enough that the fact that he was here was something he considered a sacrifice or a huge risk. That he'd gone as far as staying close enough to endanger himself was something he'd consider exonerating, regardless of who was taking the bigger chance because of him. The confusion of feelings in her heart dwindled down to two, and they were familiar as hell: pity and contempt. The tense cast of her shoulders relented as she looked up at him, still barefoot and wearing her torn and sweat-drenched black dress with its rhinestone trim.

Chloe sighed and caught her the ex-husband's dark gaze as his eyes finally dropped to see why she was taking so long to deliver the second the blow. "I'm not hitting you again. You're not worth the effort. You think you can manage to help me get into their system?"

"Yeah, I think I can. I just hope when you get some perspective on…".

"I don't need any perspective, Morris. Everything you've done tonight is just… you, the "you" that doesn't see the big picture, the "you" that wants the fast buck, that wants to charm your way through life and not give a damn past the next couple of minutes! Well, in the couple of minutes, maybe two million people might start to die, so I guess that puts it in the realm of something you can handle - so yeah, for their sake, I'll use your help. They're more important than wanting to wring your neck!" She turned away from him but even more abruptly turned back, "And when we're done, just get out of here, take your immunity with you, and then figure out where you can shove it." Chloe spun away from him; the two men in between her and the hallway with the blown-open door made haste to get out of her way. Head down, his eyes glued to the floor, Morris followed her, saying nothing as he sat down beside her and pulled up the first screen of data.

Curtis Manning rubbed a large hand over his face as he walked away from the scene in the security office of the Cerulean Cove, or what had been the Cerulean Cove. God knew what was going to happen to the place now. That had gone slightly better than he'd worried. Morris O'Brian was still alive and Chloe seemed to look no worse for wear aside from exhaustion and that was definitely something she knew how to deal with until the point where she collapsed and couldn't do anything more. Scanning the lobby, he quickly found Buchanan standing near the center of the front desk, a radio in his hand. From the snatches of the conversation he was having, the ordnance team on the top floor was apparently finishing up the deactivation of the last round of explosives. As they had suspected, they were incendiaries. Buchanan ended his conversation and immediately extended his hand to the black man.

"Great job out there."

"Thanks but it's not over. You know about the situation in New York I assume?"

"I do. I've been talking with the President. Curtis, why was Morris O'Brian in here?"

Manning's expression tightened and he looked away. "He's not and we have to keep it that way He had information; we cut him one deal and then he extended it when he found out Chloe was in here and helped us get someone inside: Cassie's been in here four or five hours, working with Jack."

Buchanan's expression reflected mild shock and then a dark confusion. "Gibson? I can't believe he agreed to help put his ex-sister-in-law into the middle of a terrorist siege."

Manning glared in the direction of the still dusty hallway. "O'Brian restricted his offer to Cassie because they hate each other but he trusts and she couldn't wait to prove what an ass he was. I'm gonna' have a hell of a time debriefing this and keeping him out of it but we wouldn't have been able to end this part of it without him."

"Sounds like you had an even more interesting night than I did." Buchanan managed a thin smile and glanced out over the milling crowd in the lobby, a far cry from the one that had arrived almost 12 hours beforehand. "Let's change our focus to getting these people out of here and not just treating them and sorting them. The Senators and their staffs and the Speaker have been put in guarded rooms to rest. We're screening the hotel staff and the rest of the guests and after the night they've put in, I think we owe Jack and Chloe a few days rest in protective custody."

"Chloe'll want to finish what she's doing and see this through. Jack'll want to stay with her. You know that, Sir."

"Yeah, absolutely. Did you see Jack on the way in?"

"No, and I was looking. I wanted to get O'Brian through here in one piece under his and Cassie's nose."

Both men shared a tense smile and turned to look for Bauer. After a few minutes they moved out from the desk and slowly walked through the lobby, searching, and finally returning to each other at the base of the spiraling staircase, both shaking their heads. It was Manning who noticed the next conspicuous absence. "Bill, half of Tac One isn't here either."

Buchanan felt the pieces fall slowly into place, familiar and chilling, but also oddly reassuring pieces. "Jack and half of Tac One are both missing. Now how do you suppose that works out?" An edge of sarcasm cut at Manning's ears.

"I think we both know the answer to that, Sir. What do you want to do?"

"The best thing we can do where Jack is involved. Give him some time but then we'll start looking."

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The blood trail past the first door became invisible in the darkness, reduced to a few glimmers that soon became indistinguishable from the occasional puddle of water on the floors, that in this maintenance area of the Cerulean Cove, were concrete. Dim, bare bulbs lit the tangle of pipes weaving around the open concrete supports, interspersed with large and small utility cabinets, and electrical and HVAC monitoring stations. The smell of chlorine and cleaning fluids tainted the damp air.

Jack stood inside the still open, blood-smeared doorway, scanning the darkness for the slightest movement and keyed up to hear the slightest sound that he could attribute to a damaged body moving awkwardly through the complex. The dull roar of pumps and ventilators still active made the latter nearly impossible. Believing he could find nothing more from his current vantage, he was about to move forward, casting an impatient glance back toward the lobby. Before he took two steps, seven figures moved quickly through the door, led by Marcus Griffin. Each of them carried a full array of equipment but moved quietly and quickly, fanning out to the right where the expanse of the maintenance area lay from this position. Last through the door, he recognized Cassie in a quick flash of dark blond hair. She spared a moment to glare at him and then returned her attention to the job.

There was no debate, no awkward moment between Griffin and Bauer as to who was in charge. These were his men but Bauer's undisputed experience immediately placed him in command. Bauer gave the signal to move forward and they spread themselves out about ten feet apart, quietly weaving their way forward, carefully scoping the areas before them that could serve as hiding places or doorways along the wall. So far there had been none of the latter.

They had covered nearly half of the large basement area before the first sound of trouble reached them, the noise of muffled shot followed by the clatter of a body falling to the floor, accompanied by the clatter of a rifle against pipes.

Griffin's voice barked out into the damp darkness. "Positions?!"

"Position One, clear!"

"Position Two, clear!"

"Positions Three, clear!"

Silence.

"Position Four? Position Four! Barnett?"

The silence continued. Jack glanced over to his right and cursed quietly. They'd lost a man. He dropped down behind the tangle of pipes nearest him and looked over to the man ten feet to his right. He signaled him to move farther to his right, watching with approval as the young man, already on the ground, nodded, and began to close the gap left by the fallen operative. He moved farther to the right himself as they reconfigured, glancing back to see Cassie hugging the ground, a silenced pistol in her hands signaling the man to her left to follow their example and spread out in the same direction.

In less than two minutes they began moving forward again, on their feet or crawling forward as the cover demanded. Jack, holding the center position, glanced continuously up and down the line, his thoughts slowed by exhaustion - he still realized one thing, that their quarry, injured as he was and still moving undetected this long was highly skilled and obviously still dangerous. They'd have to try something different soon to flush him out and stop whatever his intentions were when he slipped away.

Six massive generators loomed into view before the CTU operatives, grayish green hulks that blocked most of the view going forward. As soon as the obstruction became visible to each of them, they dropped to the cold cement floor and resumed moving. Jack allowed himself a thin smile as what he'd been teaching them came instantly into play, to head for cover the moment you see your enemy unexpectedly has it themselves. He took a breath and hoped his voice wouldn't echo into incomprehensibility inside the concrete and metal filled chamber. "Tac One, move on search pattern Charlie. Position five, hold for one count."

Cassie glanced over at him as she hugged the ground, understanding the reasons for the separate order and admiring Bauer's presence of mind, especially under the circumstances. She knew CTU's search profiles but these men hadn't worked with her with the exception of Griffin. They might not know she would be familiar with the maneuver, a strategy that called for the two operatives furthest out to move forward, followed sixty seconds later by the next pair and so on, forming a pincer movement that would slowly enclose their quarry. She counted the time off and then moved in, she assumed, time with the second operative, heading for the next spot of cover, a metal storage cabinet that claimed to be holding a collection of spare regulators and valve stems. She stopped and looked back as Jack and the operative paired with him, just barely in her sight, moved in their wake.

Two shots came the moment Bauer and his partner had reached cover, sounding once and then a dozen times through the tangle of metal and concrete. There was a cry of pain and a crash and suddenly they saw a flash of movement in the cluttered, dimly lit basement. A door opened then slammed closed, followed by the sound of a lock being thrown on the other side.

Knowing their quarry was the only one who would have locked a door behind them, the CTU personnel erupted from cover and ran south toward the sound of the closing door, fanning out along the wall until they found another nearly fifty yards to the east. With no time for caution and fairly certain the quarry would hardly have been staking it out to try and kill the five remaining operatives at once, they slammed open the door and instantly took up defensive positions just outside the area onto which it entered.

Glimmering and pristine, uplit and glimmering mysteriously in the darkness, an Olympic-sized pool stretched out before them. They turned from it to scan the concrete deck and spotted their quarry, bracing himself against the south wall and now moving considerably more slowly as he headed for the open door on the other side. Each of them made sure the others were clear and then lifted their weapons. The instant before they fired Bauer's voice echoed loudly through the huge room. "Hold your fire! Stand down."

Cassie fell back from where she knelt on the floor. "Jack, what--?"

"He's got a PDA. We don't want to damage it," he answered quickly. "Close on him, get a better shot."

That his death had been temporarily averted meant nothing to the man they were pursuing; all that mattered now was that he find the control in his damaged hands to dial the last two numbers and tell Bhakti to give the order to release the toxin, to let him know that he, too, had failed, that the only payback they now had was their final measure. Sukumal lurched forward and raised a trembling, bloody, and now two-fingered right hand toward the small black device in his left. He'd gotten eight of the numbers in after several attempts and back-ups on the tiny keyboard, an enemy in and of itself to his huge hands. One of the shots he had taken in the exchange with Bauer had struck the pistol in his hands, exploding the shell in the chamber. His thumb alone was now holding the PDA phone as he stumbled forward to get behind just one more locked door.

The five remaining CTU staffers and their LAPD liaison moved forward until the were several dozens of yards closer to their struggling prey, who was paying little attention to their movements in favor of completing his own intentions. If nothing else, Bauer gave him a cold bit of admiration for his focus, but it was his focus that made him dangerous. Bauer raised a hand and stopped the others. "I'm a Federal agent! Stop where you are!"

Sukumal glanced back and unsteadily raised his weapon, firing wildly and missing badly before he jerked forward again, leaving a trail of blood from what was left of his other hand.

Griffin lowered his weapon and glanced back at the locked door behind which two of his fallen men lay. "He must have caught them at point blank range."

Jack nodded and looked at his forces, trying to recall how many shots had been fired. "Keep me covered. If you have to fire, aim for the arm carrying the PDA. Disable it before he can throw it in the water." With that, Bauer took off, running down the long sidewall of the pool area, heading for the juxtaposed, blue tiled wall to the south, his eyes never leaving the figure lurching purposefully toward the door. He turned back to fire a few more wild shots that struck the wall between Bauer and the others as he underestimated the speed with which he was being closed on by the blond man.

Bauer picked himself up and sped forward again reaching the wall down which the giant was moving, gathering himself for a last burst of energy. Reaching the wall, Jack saw an opening that led to the showers and changing stalls. He ducked into the concrete doorway, checking his weapon as he kept focused on the huge man far before him, pulling up as he came back around the corner to find Gibson flat along the wall where he'd been moments ago.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Keeping my sister from killing me so she can kill you later"."

Bauer retreated back into the shower area again, dragging her with him. "You're disobeying a direct order. I could have your badge."

"One… you've had my badge, Officer Bauer, and two… you don't mean that."

Bauer's head fell back even as his jaw clenched, the coordinated result of anger and resignation coming to a frustrated détente. "Fine, but from here on--."

"Do as I'm told."

Bauer said nothing, merely turned his back on her and slid over to the edge of the tiled opening. "He's almost to the door. Move."

Sukumal glanced back as he reached the edge of the south wall and saw there were two people behind him, Bauer and a woman he didn't recognize in black clothing. They were almost upon him, racing forward. Even through the blaze of pain coming from his severely wounded right hand he knew why they were risking pursuing him without cover while he was still armed; to retrieve the PDA and trace the numbers, to find whomever he'd been communicating with and stop all of them. However, now that Bauer had destroyed everything that was to have taken place here, had left them with their last resort only, he was determined to carry it out, to have that final bit of revenge before he spent the rest of his existence in hell being laughed at by Nirmala Hassal. Sukumal pushed himself away from the cold wall and turned, struggling for one last bit of clarity and coordination to aim his gun with a shaking left hand.

Jack fired his last two shots the moment the giant before him began to turn back, not at the immense and bloodied man they were pursuing but close enough to cause him to close in on himself slightly and reorient his own failing aim. It was now almost point blank, close enough to where someone untrained could have hit him but that was useful to Bauer's plan even more. The empty gun left his hand a moment later, catching the huge man in the face as hard as Bauer could throw it. He staggered back, every shot he had left going wild before his own weapon clattered to the ground and went to the fresh lacerations near his eye.

Not expecting Bauer's move, Cassie nevertheless took advantage of it, closing the distance between herself and the newly injured man and spinning three kicks in rapid succession into his chest. He staggered several feet back into the wall but caught himself more quickly than seemed possible and lunged forward; he was now, however, only uncoordinated enough to try to ram her back toward the water.

Gibson leapt to the side but not quite far enough, her retreat hampered by the lifeguard stand that stood on the side of the pool. She landed on a back already bruised by her impact with the wall after taking the shots in the vest and grunted painfully, only dimly aware for a moment of Jack above her, wrestling with the blood-soaked right arm of the man on top of her, wrenching it back out of the way. Something cracked and then Bauer was atop of the giant himself, struggling to get a chokehold on him. He succeeded after a few frantic seconds and worked to snap the thick neck in his grip.

Desperate to finish what he had started, awash with adrenaline, the huge man dragged his wounded and nerve-damaged left arm beneath him and used nearly the last of his strength to push himself up slightly, then used the bulk of his body still resting on Gibson to drag her forward just under a foot, close enough for his purpose.

Stunned by the strength still left in his opponent, Jack gathered himself and retightened his grip, realizing what the huge man was doing but unable to stop him in the few instants that it took for him to yank all of them forward and drag Gibson's neck over the edge of the pool. Opting not to fight Bauer but threaten him, he reached up and grabbed hold of the woman's hair, lifting her head forward and up as far as he could. "Get off me or I'll break her neck!"

Jack pulled off the man instantly, no longer inclined to underestimate his strength. He allowed him to rise up enough to lift his chest off the white concrete deck and, in part, off of Gibson, to change his angle enough to be useful…

… and then landed on him again, knocking him forward and face-down into the water. He immediately released Cassie in an effort to push himself back but Bauer was too fast. Instead of fighting him where he could use the last of his strength in a rage, Bauer leapt from his back into the water, lacing his hands behind the giant's head and holding it beneath the roiling surface. Free from the beneath him, Cassie rolled onto his back and immediately began clawing through his pockets as he struggled with Bauer and the dragging force of the water, coming up in seconds with the blood-smeared PDA. The instant he knew it was gone, rage provided their opponent one last surge of strength. The massive muscles in his left side flexed and finally dragged his face clear of the water enough for a solid breath of air, pulling Bauer along with him.

The last act of defiance lasted only as long as it took for Cassie to snap her heel into the arm supporting him and for Bauer get a more secure grip on the collar of his fatigues, brace his feet against the sidewall of the pool, and yank him down and forward again.

This time it was over, the huge man struggled for a moment more and then collapsed face down in the water now blood-stained from the wounded hand that had followed his head into the pool. Next to him on the deck, Gibson dropped to her knees and yanked him over, face up, to watch the last bubble of breath escape him. His hands unclenched from the fabric of the man's fatigues, Jack eased over to the side of the pool next to him. "He's dead. Forget it."

Gibson nodded and fell back to sit on the concrete deck, handing the PDA up to Griffin as he closed on them, then reached forward, braced her feet on the raised, rounded edge of the pool and offered Bauer both her hands. She yanked him up out of the water and onto the deck between her legs where he sat for a moment as they both regained their breath. After a moment, he gripped her upraised knee and shakily came to his feet, not glancing back once at the body behind them as they returned to the lobby, letting Griffin race ahead of them with the PDA in hand.

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The crowd that had filled the lobby of the Cerulean Cove was mostly gone when they returned. All that remained were the bodies and the CTU staff who had taken over the area. Ambulances swarmed outside and police cars formed a broad phalanx around them. Two SUV units had pulled up onto the concrete steps and sat outside the open doors. Six men in a mix of fatigues, all of them slightly injured and the only apparent survivors, were on their knees in handcuffs in the center of the lobby. All of it barely registered with Bauer as he spotted the tall, somber figures of Aaron Pierce, Martha Logan, Curtis Manning, and Bill Buchanan, each of whom turned as soon as Griffin burst into their midst, holding up the PDA.

Recognizing it, Buchanan snapped it up immediately and glared at the nine digits on the small screen before him. His priorities lay not with the finding of the last digits, however, but with what he could do now that he knew that the call to unleash the toxin had not been completed. He raised his own phone and struck the redial.

"Mr. President, give the order, shut down the Van Courtland Park facility and take anyone on duty currently and on the persons-of-interests list into custody."

"The Chairman of the Joints Chiefs is here with me, consider it done and I'll be giving one more order; you may want to stay on the line for it."

Buchanan took a quick breath. "Sir, I think we'd all like to hear that. If I may…?"

"Of course."

Buchanan hit the speakerphone control and lowered the device down so that all of them could hear, his eyes locking onto Jack Bauer's reddened one's as Gardner's voice came loudly and clearly from the phone in Buchanan's hand. "Captain Mathias, this is the President. The situation at home appears under control. In one hour, you are to surface the Alexander and destroy those two vessels tracking you. And make sure they know we meant it." There was a rustle of cloth and a renewed focus in Gardner's voice as he turned back to the microphone that was relaying his words to Los Angeles. "Your status, Bill?"

"One more bit of clean-up to do, Sir, as you're obviously aware. I'll be back to you as soon as I can."

"Understood. Good job to all of you. Your country owes you a huge debt." There was a click and Buchanan lowered one phone and raised the other again.

"Now let's sort this last mess out."

The security office of the Cerulean Cove was never intended for a small crowd, but held one it did. Chloe took the blood-covered phone with a grimace and put it down on the table before her, pointing at the small screen and looking at Morris O'Brian with an expression of distaste. "Is that where you'd call to get your check?"

Now in the presence of Bauer and Gibson both, a blush scalded the bald man's face for a moment and then he sighed quickly. "If you've enjoyed your moment… then…. No - I don't know the rest of the number. We'll have to do this the old fashioned way."

There were, of course, only a few possibilities left and a quick, warrantless-for-the-moment hack into the Verizon servers gave them what they needed, a billing address registered to a home on the Pacific Coast Highway less than two dozen miles north.

Chloe struck the print key and tore the paper from the tray as soon as it finished the map. "That's it. That's where the call's billed to and it corresponds with the last tower that picked up a call." She stood still no longer than it took for Buchanan to take the paper from her, shoving her way through the crowded room and burying herself in Bauer's arms, only to discover immediately that he was soaking wet. She leapt back but only for a moment as his arms then closed around her, not having returned her embrace at first because of his sodden state. She tilted her face up from his shoulder after a moment and huffed a tired breath into his clinging shirt. "Tell me later."

Bauer pulled her closer and rested his cheek atop her head. "Deal." He looked up a moment later and focused tired and chlorine stressed eyes on Buchanan as he broke from a quick huddle with Curtis Manning and turned back to the others assembled in the small room. "Everyone, we've got the location of what we believe to be their headquarters on satellite back at CTU. I want Tac One and Tac Two assembled in three minutes. We have to move before they have much more time to wonder what the hell's gone wrong."


	13. Chapter 13

HELLO ALL... first and foremost, forgive the delay. I won't go into just how crazy real life has been but I'm sure each of you who are followers of the chapters I've posted know that I usually post them with as much regularity as I possibly can. I hope the ending is worthy of your time and that all of you, if you are of such a persuasion, have a wonderful holiday season.

Epilogue:

They emerged out into a night shattered by an army of emergency vehicles, rivers of flashing red and blue lights flowed toward them down every street and formed a reservoir of pulsating brilliance that blinded the four people that exited the front doors of the Cerulean Cove, all of whom stopped on the edge of the first terraced step up to the entryway and simply breathed in their first breaths of fresh, free air. The sirens had at least been silenced. There was no need for the emergency personnel to announce their arrival. The swarm had its temporary home.

Chloe O'Brian turned to look back at the circular tower behind them, now brightly lit out of several windows as the last phases of the search were completed. She sighed and dropped her head against Jack Bauer's chest, too exhausted even for tears as his still-wet arms, shivering with exhaustion and the sudden chill, went around her.

Leaning against a tall stone planter Bill Buchanan took out a borrowed phone and tabbed in the number he'd been waiting hours to call.

"Hello."

"Karen, it's me. It's over. I'm fine."

A muted sob escaped the phone's tiny speaker. "I'm on my way. I'm at LAX but they wouldn't let me leave here while they were moving on the building."

"I'm glad. It was … it, uhm… We lost some good people. Has the President submitted any type of war resolution?"

"If he has, I don't know. I don't think it's ready yet in any case. We need to do some investigating to make sure we don't have a rouge group operating inside the government of Kajananphur or if it was official. If it was official we'll need authorization from India and Paki----. You know, something? I really don't give a damn at the moment. Where are you exactly? My ride is here."

A smile of pure adoration relieved the tension on Buchanan's face almost completely as he listened to Karen Hayes put the world on hold. "On the front veranda but I'll be moving to the Mobile Command Unit in a few minutes. I want to check on the Senators and their staffs. We have casualties. Meet me at CTU; I'll head there as soon as this is finally over."

"I will."

Buchanan looked up from the phone and then began scanning the plaza for Manning. He was jogging toward them in the flash-riddled semi-darkness, his rapid movement toward them attracting one more set of eyes. Keyed for battle one instant and relieved the next, Cassie closed the distance between them with a few long strides of her own. Manning caught her up in a bear hug that with little effort more might have been a means of killing someone, releasing her instantly when she cried out but hung onto him. He pushed her back with alarm. "What's wrong? Are you all right?"

She shook her head quickly. "Yeah, I'm just feeling… artistic. My back must look like a Monet."

Manning pulled her close carefully and quickly again, this time by only her neck, knowing her answer was the joke she used when she'd simply been badly banged up yet again. Her smile faded, however, as she stepped back and safe within his reach suddenly raised her calloused hands before her, and in the tumble of blinding lights stared at them distantly. "I killed someone, no gun, no weapon – except, well… me. I always knew I could but it's different when… it's different now. I can feel every bone, every muscle, every joint, but it's like they're not mine."

He reached for her again but she shook her head, focusing inward suddenly and shrugging herself upright, moved to stand at his side. Buchanan held back as he watched them, letting them have their moment, as he had had his, then approached them. "Detec--- Cassie, if you're up to it, we need a silent cordon set up around an address on the PCH."

She shook herself slightly and scuffed a hand through the mess of her hair. "No problem. I'm sure some of my guys are redundant here now, same for the Sheriff's Department. The first casualties we knew about were cops so I think at least thirty percent of my guys are off-duty or overlapping jurisdiction. I'll break them off and---." Gibson suddenly fell silent and her gaze, unfocused as the plans ran through her head, suddenly narrowed to a razor thin line and her voice became brittle with cold. "Excuse me."

Not that they had a choice. Re-energized, Cassandra Gibson stalked past both of them, brushing past Jack and her sister as they held each other, eyes closed against the glare of the chaotic lights and the chill. Both turned to watch as she burst into a sprint and planted herself directly before Morris O'Brian as he reached the first terraced step, hugging the small retaining wall and hoping his departure would go unnoticed. Morris jerked back and froze, knowing better than to challenge her. Chloe made a half-step toward them, half afraid that she was about to kill him, and then gave up. She wasn't that crazy and in fact, bizarrely, her sister was almost smiling.

Just within earshot, even in the din of motors and shouted orders as the forensics task forces assembled, her voice was shockingly calm and even more strangely, humble. "I still think you're pathetic. I still think you're a bust waiting to stick, but you got me in there tonight just in time to stop my little sister from getting raped and killed. I owe you… so --- your name's out of this; I'll even get your rental out of impound if they took it; I'll even get you a ride home tonight, so as far as my sister's concerned, this is for her…."

Chloe O'Brian watched in exhaustion-dulled shock as her sister suddenly gripped the back of Morris' neck and bizarrely… forcibly kissed him on the forehead. She shoved him back but kept a hand on his shoulder, her head cocking slowly to one side… "but as for my city and your unquestioned, unnumbered Swiss bank account, this is for them". Still slack with shock from the "kiss", Morris' face crumpled in pain an instant later as his former sister-in-law's knee made a controlled slam into his crotch. Morris collapsed in a heap, groaning and glaring up at Gibson as she glared down.

He regained his breath and squinted up at her in the swirl of lights that made the stars he was still seeing all the more prominent. "Fine. But that's it. One more move and I'll bring you up on charges of police brutality. I guess I had that coming."

A smile twisted the tall woman's face as she leaned down toward him. "Take it from a vice cop, Morris. It'll be a week before you have anything… coming."

Morris sat frozen as she retreated from him, returning to Buchanan and Manning as if nothing had happened. Chloe watched her as she breezed past, looking back at Bauer as his eyes also left her sister, "Geez, for both our sakes, don't ever piss her off."

The smile that instantly came to Bauer's lips turned into a weak stream of laughter and he leaned back to sit on another of the huge planters designed to look like open treasure chests spilling forth gold in the form of forsythia. Chloe turned to settle down next to him and as she did spotted the nearly forgotten wound on his left arm; her hand reached up to cradle the limb. She scanned the clutch of emergency vehicles and spotted an ambulance. "Come on, let's get someone to look at that, and no crap about everybody else; they have twice as many EMTs here as they need."

Bauer glanced up at her as she hovered, then nodded and sighed, letting her lead him down the terraced steps and to a seat in the open back door of the nearest ambulance. The short, dark-haired female technician was on him in seconds, cutting the sleeve from his shirt and removing the crude bandaging, then guessing instantly it was a bullet graze without a word from either of them. "Is your tetanus vaccine current?"

Jack nodded as she looked at the wound and applied a large sterile bandage laden with antibiotic gel over it then taped a cushion of gauze in place over it. "It might be a good idea to see a doctor but there's not enough to stitch unless you want to cut down on the chance of it scarring. Anything else?"

Chloe put a hand over Bauer's mouth and met the eyes of the short-haired woman. "He hit his head when he fell." She turned from the woman and sat down next to Bauer on the bumper of the ambulance. "Just shut up and let her look you over… or… or… I won't let you make it up to me that we had to go on this really crappy date!"

Bauer stared down at her for a moment and then smiled, relenting to the quick examination as she held onto him. He knew what was on her mind as her fingers dug into the back of his hand, her knowledge that he had been held and tortured under medical circumstances, that there were things that still caused him to flashback when the right triggers were present. He was, however, almost too tired for them to even involuntarily engage, but when the penlight in the technician's hand flashed in his eyes his grip on O'Brian's hand tightened and locked without his awareness.

The tech stepped away from him a moment later, returning from the side-door of the ambulance with a thick gray blanket that Chloe immediately seized and draped over Bauer as the technician spoke. "I'd really suggest you go to the hospital. If you have a concussion it's borderline but it's probably safer to be sure. If you don't go…," her voice tightened slightly and her gaze went to O'Brian, "don't let him sleep for more than an hour without waking him for the next 24 hours and if you can't get him to a hospital… immediately."

Chloe nodded and continued running her arm up and down his back. "I will. Thanks. Don't worry." She offered Bauer a side-long, half-hearted glare. "We've been through this before."

Jack sat for a moment longer then came heavily to his feet, sharing the thick blanket with O'Brian as she slid her arm around his waist and tucked herself against him. They stood and watched as the stream of people departing the Cerulean Cove dwindled rapidly. The moment that it ended the investigation teams descended and the pulsing red and blue glare was now reflected off the long streamers of yellow tape that warned the public not to cross them.

Last out, unsurprisingly, was Aaron Pierce. Martha Logan stood beside him in her blood-soaked gown and one of the same blankets that now enshrouded Jack and Chloe. Moving together beneath it, they headed for Logan and Pierce. Martha let the blanket around her own shoulders drop and embraced them both at once, kissing them both on the cheek before stepping back, the expression on her face so riddled with emotion that it explained her silence, that there was so much she wanted to say that there was nowhere to start. The moment passed quickly, however, and her gaze fell solely on Bauer for a moment. "Do you ever get tired of being amazing?"

As she'd come to expect, his gaze immediately dropped to the concrete decking of the veranda. He opened his mouth to dismiss her inquiry and its implications when O'Brian answered for him. "I get tired of him being amazing like this," she snapped, butting her head gently into his chin.

Logan smiled at her broadly and looped an arm through Pierce's as he stood from retrieving the blanket. "I understand completely, trust me. Look… you two. I'll call you next week. We're all going on vacation, on me, up into the mountains, with only my personal staff at our beck and call, all of them vetted by yours truly here." She poked Pierce in the ribs lightly and he smiled down at her as he returned the blanket to her shoulders.

"We'd both love to have you up there, not that I get much say in things most of the time otherwise." His delivery was deadpan but the razor-thin smile that undermined it a few seconds later was genuine and loving. Martha returned it with a thinner one of her own but it faded after a moment.

"I'll call you. Right now I need to get to the hospital and check on Senator Freeman and then I'll deal with the press. This time tomorrow I'll be more exhausted than I am now." She leaned forward and kissed both Bauer and O'Brian again then gave Pierce a kiss on the mouth that lasted long enough for his cheeks to redden from more than the passing chill of the early morning air. She squeezed his hand and floated off, into a long black limo with small flags on the corners of each bumper that had been allowed past the cordon.

Pierce shook his head after her and looked back. "By the time she gets done with the reporters, we'll all need that vacation ten times over." His expression went from tired bemusement back to somber in a few seconds, however. "Jack, Chloe, I want to thank you both again. Curtis told me you two must've gotten the signal out, and then you took on the whole damn mess in there on your own for a long time. The country's in your debt."

Under the blanket, Bauer looked away again then glanced up at the immense blue tower with regrets just beginning to gel in his mind. "We only did what made sense at the ti---."

A tone and small burst of static cut Bauer off. "This is Agent Dunning. Bill Buchanan said to let you know we're two minutes from moving out. The police are on their way to set up a cordon on the PCH. If you want to finish this we'd be glad to have you along."

"Understood. I'll be there." Pierce lowered the radio and looked at Bauer and O'Brian. "Room for two more. You two wanna' finish this?"

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There were three techs sitting in the back of the MCU when Chloe O'Brian followed Jack Bauer up the three small steps and into the van lined with monitoring and communication equipment. All three of them started to come to their feet when they saw her, bedraggled as she was in her ragged dress and make-up now smeared from being contact with Bauer's wet shirt, ready to offer her their station. Her face twisted slightly and a spark of energy returned to her eyes at the unspoken compliment. She glanced down the row and took the second seat. Jack grabbed a free headset and stood behind her, not realizing how tightly he was gripping the back of her chair.

Aaron Pierce slammed the door shut behind Buchanan and himself and they grabbed onto handholds in the ceiling, then through his radio Pierce gave the driver the order to move out. On the screen around them, their position relative to the address of their quarry, began to change.

The roads were nearly empty in the immediate area around LAX, populated only by emergency vehicles still and the occasional flagged limousine being allowed back into the area, offering some of the uninjured but more well-connected victims a touch of the familiar before they were taken to hospitals for observation or back to CTU to rest and then to debrief. Vans from the three broadcast networks, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, KTLA, and a few other agencies were amongst those lining West Century Blvd. The lights in the rooms of every hotel outside the evacuated area seemed to be lit. Los Angeles was waking to another news day suffering the curse of interesting times.

Chloe was distantly amazed at herself and grateful. Before a computer again, one that she knew well, with access to the sort of things that were second nature to her by now, she drew on her headset and caught her second wind. She also knew that before long she would be home in her own bed and the promise of that sparked her as well. One last thing remained… get whomever was behind this and let the President deal with the country that had gotten this damned bright idea in the first place. The best revenge was knowing that it had, of course, all come to nothing for them and they had CTU to thank.

A cold smile suddenly on her dry lips, Chloe O'Brian glanced at the other two. "I want everyone to send their screens to me." She nodded as the icons flicked to life at the bottom of her screen, then licked her dry lips and adjusted the mike in front of them. "Who's in the LAPD Command Unit? Over."

"Cadet Paris Hilton. Who do you think?"

Scowling, not missing a beat, Chloe accepted the feed that suddenly appeared on her screen that came with the reply, signals from the dashcams of two LAPD cruisers specially equipped to work with CTU. "Sorry you got demoted, Cadet Hilton. I need a sit rep."

A short, stifled, begrudged grunt of laughter pre-empted the sit-rep. "We've established the silent cordon already using units that were in the areas north and south of the address. We have undercover cars making passes to keep things looking relatively normal but we have a clear field of operation for a mile in both directions. It's all yours now"

"Understood… thanks."

She sat back and glanced up at Jack and then Buchanan. "I'll get a satellite feed in about two minutes. How are we going in?"

Buchanan glanced with tired impatience at the bar on the screen that was slowly turning green to show the progress of the satellite being reoriented. "We'll figure that out once we get the feed. It'll depend on the terrain and how close the other residences are. We won't have a chance to evacuate them without raising suspicion if they're too close and at this hour they'll be occupied."

Jack sighed quietly too himself, forcing from his mind the thought of any more civilian casualties. This wasn't the time and thank God, it wasn't his call. He was too exhausted to trust himself with anyone else's life at the moment and there were tons of qualified people answering the call around him, some of whom he'd trained. The agents in his classes were the best of the best, young agents being honed for special operations far more difficult than this one seemed, for now, to be.

The bar on the screen flashed green and vanished, offering in its place an infrared image centered on a mid-sized home approximately fifty yards back from a cliff-side expanse of the Pacific Coast Highway. Three other homes were in the shot, none closer than twenty yards away. From the architecture, Chloe guessed there were doors they could access to quietly wake the residents and evacuate them, estimating the time it would take to be no more than seven minutes if Tac-One began to move on the ground now.

Buchanan looked at the three slate-roofed homes in the shot of the target one. "Send them in. Have them move fast and take the civilians over here." He leaned forward and pointed to a road behind a very small ridge two hundred yards just north of the three homes. Send the decoy cars in to take them out."

Chloe turned back, relaying the order and then switching frequencies. "Tac One, this is O'Brian. Curtis, move out heading north on foot about fifty yards in from the highway. Evacuate the first two houses and the fourth from where we've set up the cordon. Make sure that nobody in the third one sees anything. Get the civilians to the road over the ridge to the north. There'll be back up waiting to take them out of there."

"Roger that, Chloe. Homes one, two, and four, covert evac, north to rendezvous with the back up. After that?"

Chloe looked up at Buchanan just out of habit, seeing him nod at her experienced assumption. Had she been alone in charge of this situation, the strategy would have been her call. "After that get back and surround the third house. Hold your positions till further notice."

"Understood."

They watched it all play out over the next few minutes, the force of twelve young men led by Manning swarming out from the vehicle ahead of them under the cover of the fading darkness, moving quickly over the scrub-covered hillsides to the manicured lawns, carefully keeping the terrain or the first target homes between themselves and the long rancher that was believed to house their quarry. In minutes, the images of shadowy, infrared figures on-screen, delayed by a few seconds due to the turn-around time to the satellite and back, were suddenly joined by several others. Moving more slowly, they all were headed north within the estimated seven minutes.

Moments later, those they had roused from their sleep and herded north safely removed to the four cars waiting for them, the dozen figures returned back up the hillside and took up positions around their target.

Bill Buchanan looked up from the screen before Chloe and glanced at the others assembled, specifically Jack Bauer and Aaron Pierce. "Gentlemen, suggestions?"

"How badly do we want any of them alive?"

Chloe felt a bitter smile twist her lips at Jack's question.

Pierce grimaced himself as he offered his input. "The White House will want someone they can ask questions of outside of the ones we grabbed back at the hotel. We can pretty much figure they were just muscle. None of them had communication devices that would go anywhere but to each other inside the jamming field. Their only orders were coming from the leader we killed."

Jack's gaze narrowed on the taller man. "I left one named Hassal alive on the third floor. He knew every---."

Buchanan raised a hand to stop him and shook his head. "We haven't had time to share everything. The man you killed by the pool seems to have killed Hassal when he found him, drowned him in a bathtub."

Jack took in the news with a grimace, suddenly intensely aware of the fact that the less exposed areas of his clothing were still wet. In the comfortable warmth of the crowded command vehicle he'd almost forgotten. "Perfect," he muttered to himself, the irony of the two deaths passing through both their minds as he looked at Chloe. Her eyes headed for the ceiling of the van then went back to the screen.

"Mr. Buchanan, we only have about ten minutest before it'll start getting light and we'll have to move Tac One back if we don't want them spotted."

Buchanan nodded and glanced at the tense and tired faces around him, which would have included his own had there been a mirror available. "What's the status in New York?"

One of the other agents who had offered his seat to Chloe raised a long-fingered hand. "The reservoirs and the Van Courtland station are secured. They've taken sixteen people into custody, including three the State Department has verified are from Kajananphur originally. They were high-level operatives once we had reason to run their prints."

Pierce grunted softly to himself and offered up a cold smile. "Whatever the White House wants, that ends a big part of any immediate reason for keeping any of them here alive."

Buchanan glanced at him with a thin smile then looked down at O'Brian. "Order them to close in and get the back up forces in right behind them."

She nodded and turned back, catching herself with her legs as the van lurched forward. At her word, the thirteen figures began to close rapidly on the home on the screen. By the time the MCU jerked to a stop opposite the driveway, smoke from diversionary grenades and muted explosions and flashes from the flash-bangs were coming through the windows and the opening where the rear door had been in the one-story dwelling. Ears covered, night vision goggles and filter masks in place, the CTU team headed into the chaos, knocking down the front door with a shaped charge and spreading out to search the building.

Curtis Manning took a warm breath of the filtered air being offered up to his lungs and looked around to make a final check of the positions of his team as they secured the outer rooms of the dwelling and began searching the others. The men moving before him were slightly blurred figures of brilliant green, each wearing a flashing light on their left shoulder to relay that they were CTU and not some other combatant who had entered the field of conflict.

The rooms were empty but Manning and the men working with him knew better than to assume this location was what it appeared. The largest room in the now-smoke-filled home was the uncarpeted living room, furnished only with a few token chairs. Manning ordered the other men back as he wired the receiver to a small block of C-4 and dashed back out into the sparse kitchen before touching his comm. "Chloe, we're blasting into the basement on a count of five."

"Roger that." There was rustle on the other end of the line as she pulled of her headset second before the tinny, muffled sound of an explosion was sent through it, loud though Manning had covered the comm with his hand when he pressed the transmitter.

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The electricity had gone out with the first set of explosions overhead. The back-up generator that was powering the main computer system had come on immediately but the antenna relay outside had been damaged badly by the assault going on above their heads or, more likely, by intent as the American agents made their way into the residence. Kathirivan Bhakti shook his head and wiped the stinging sweat from his face. His ears were humming from the pounding noises from above, his eyes burning from the grit sifting down from the ceiling. The silence from the Cerulean Cove in the last twenty five minutes; the tense and bitter-sounding confirmation when they'd sent the command to release the final chemical bonding element of the toxin – the solution to both mysteries was now clear; they'd been found out and then found. Hassal and now Sukumal had failed and failed completely. His operatives in New York had been under duress and had caved to it when he'd called. Kajananphur was doomed to remain in the thrall of the sanctions imposed by America, imposed by the hypocrites who respected no one else's freedom to rule their people as their government saw fit.

Humiliation he could not face swirled under the surface of his anger and grief and the cold acknowledgment that only one recourse was left. Of course, he was prepared for it but now it came without the glory that should have surrounded his martyrdom, the victory he could give his home over the great bully.

Patel Amrish turned away from his screen and looked over at Yana. She was shaking and muttering prayers as she rocked back and forth, her unnaturally skilled hands no longer stroking the keys but clutching each other. She knew she was about to die, just not who was to kill her. For her failure, her mother and father and two sons might likely die, too, the bloodline of a failure stopped before it could continue. At least the men would suffer the same fate… this time.

Amrish watched her for a moment as the sound of booted footsteps scrambled around overhead, searching for the hidden door that lead here, not knowing yet that there would be none, that they entered here via a short tunnel cut in the nearby cliffside. His eyes went back to Bhakti or tried to; he was moving away from them, Amrish himself, Yana and the few others, all of whom were watching him with wide, resigned, shock-dulled stares. Backing toward a cabinet against the wall, he leveled his weapon and, starting to his left, one at a time, fired a shot into the head of the first man and moved onto the next.

Amrish's lips were in mid-prayer as he waited, his eyes on the still also-praying Yana, and welcomed the bullet. The last sound he heard was not the crack of his own skull transmitted for an instant to his inner ear but the sound of an explosion outside of himself as the ceiling above them several yards distant collapsed and searchlight beams cut through the darkness. Their light faded before his eyes and was replaced by another that he was drawn toward with the pure terror that only a doomed soul could feel.

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Four men dropped through the ragged ten foot opening that had been blasted through the concrete and wood of the basement ceiling, dropping and rolling into the corners away from the light directed through the opening. They had removed their night vision goggles to keep from being blinded by it as, no doubt, their quarry would likely be after the power lines to the residence had been cut.

A man and woman were in view still moving, surrounded by a small clutch of obviously dead young men. Dark, single streams of blood ran down their faces as they slumped against a row of, save one, dead computers and screens. The man had a gun and it was aimed toward them for a brief second before two bullets struck him, one catching him in the right shoulder and the other in the side, slamming him back into the cabinet he had been backing toward while dispatching his own men. In the pause that followed, in the darkness and fading confusion that remained as the men who had found them assessed the situation, his hand slipped quickly inside it and wrapped around the small cylindrical object on the bottom shelf. He tucked it inside his sleeve as he was hauled to his feet, his captors ignoring his wounds.

Nameless hands searched him and searched Yana as well, their pale hands violating her grossly as they did. However, as he'd planned, they missed the long, slender rod that he had worked into the specially designed seam that cloaked the presence of his last resort. Pain ripped through his shoulder as they yanked his hands behind him and prepared to cuff him and he let himself cry out as it did. Hallowed by the searchlights still pouring through the opening, a tall, well-built black man was standing before him when he opened his eyes, a man who carried himself in a way that left no doubt he was the commanding officer.

"Were you in charge here?"

Bhakti stood silently for a moment, his eyes going from the black man to the ladder being dropped down into the debris field left by the blasted ceiling. "I have nothing to say."

"I'm sure that's true now, but we'll see how long you and the lady keeps your mouths shut." Manning glanced at the two men holding him. "Get him upstairs. Have them prep Interrogations One and Two. There's no point wasting time offering the easy way."

"Yes, Sir."

Manning stood aside and watched them slowly work the injured man up the ladder, allowing him only the use of the arm attached to the injured shoulder. It took him a full three minutes to ease himself up the ladder. Once up it, he was taken fully in hand and cuffed again. Curtis watched as the woman received the same treatment, urged up the ladder at gunpoint and then cuffed as she came over the edge and into the hands of the men waiting there. He turned back to the dust and debris filled basement and the two men who remained. "Isolate this place for at least 200 yards. We'll get out of here until the bomb squad does a full sweep; after that get a data forensics team down here stat. If they don't talk we'll need something to finish this mess up for the President."

"Yes, Sir," they replied, heading for the ladder. The three of them scrambled up it and exited out into the first light of dawn coming over the mountains.

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Chloe O'Brian sat back from the computer with a huff, watching on her screen the feed from the handheld, infrared camera focused on the home that had been raided, gathering footage they would be able to use in court and then, once declassified, for training. Two of the figures were flanked by CTU agents and moving more awkwardly, obviously walking while handcuffed. The man was also obviously injured and slowing their progress. Unable to do anything more, Chloe came wearily to her feet and took Bauer's hand. It was trembling slightly but stopped the moment it wrapped around her own.

Guessing what was wrong, she jerked her head slightly and he followed her without a word to the back of the van. They opened the door and stepped down into the dim morning light; pale rays of sunshine streaked the pink and indigo sky between the peaks of the distant mountains, powerless yet to take the autumn chill from the air. O'Brian wrapped her arm around Bauer's waist tightly, chiding herself for being unable to recall where they'd dumped the blankets as they'd scrambled into the MCU. She knew why Bauer had wanted out of the back of the square vehicle, that it was too reminiscent of the cargo container in which he'd spent part of his captivity by the Chinese, a cargo container pounded upon by hammers incessantly the entire time until he'd been dragged from it, disoriented and ill.

The cold outside was a more tolerable situation for him and therefore, for her as well.

They walked away from the van to watch a far smaller clutch of emergency vehicles than had surrounded the Cerulean Cove begin to line the cliff-perching stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway. Amongst them an ambulance, two fire engines and a HazMat vehicle. They made their way slowly past the police barricades and took up watch at the base of the snaking driveway.

Jack and Chloe followed, separating to making walking easier. They had no logistical reason for wanting to be there when the last of the people who had brought the terror of the last ten hours to them were brought themselves into the reach of justice but the need to watch it happen was irresistible. They stopped on the edge of the driveway, a few yards from the ambulance, and stood holding hands as the group that had raided the structure and their prisoners came in sight. The woman, wearing dark blue robes adorned with silver beads, was walking with her head down. Tears stained the clothing beneath her face. The man, however, a tall, swarthy-skinned figure with a face marked by scars, was walking as proudly as his injuries would let him manage as they moved him toward the ambulance.

Kathirivan Bhakti froze, resisting the urging and supporting hands clenched around his arms, when he laid eyes on Bauer and O'Brian. From their appearance, a shredded dress shirt and a bandaged arm, and the torn rags of the blond woman's evening dress, he gathered instantly that they had been at the Cerulean Cove, and now being amongst those who had captured him they had been part of the force that had ruined in hours a plan ten years in the making. He jerked himself free of his captors and, ignoring the woman, looked the cold-eyed and seething blond man in the eye. "You were there. You condemned my people. I'll find you from Hell, you son of a bitch."

The bandaged man stepped forward, releasing the hand of the woman and putting himself between her and them. "I'll make it easier for you. My name's Jack Bauer. I'm a federal agent, and you don't know the meaning of Hell but I'll personally make sure you find out."

He blamed it on his injuries, the stinging pain of his side and the slamming throb of his leg crippling his mind and his will, but Kathirivan Bhakti blinked, backing away a step and looking down as a gurney was brought next to him and the straps undone and blankets pulled off. He had only seconds now before he would be restrained and drugged, then stripped to undergo medical treatment.

Weapons leveled at him as the handcuffs were removed, he knew he would have only seconds but that would be sufficient. His hands remained where they were as the metal fell away from his wrists and in the moment the men on either side of him adjusted their hold to force him onto the gurney, he moved, his fingers slipping into the concealed seam and removing what seemed to be a slim, designer pen. He maneuvered it into his right and jerked away from one captor and into another, landing on him and sending them both to the ground.

The CTU agent who had been on the other side recovered his balance instantly and leapt to aid his comrade, only to find himself pulled aside by Jack Bauer. "Stop it! He's got a weapon."

Releasing the other CTU agent, Bauer opened his hands and spread them, his eyes locked on the ferocious dark ones of the man laying atop the other agent, the razor thin point of the instrument pressed to his throat. "You've got nowhere to go. These men will kill as soon as I give the word. Drop the weapon; give this up."

"You misunderstand the situation, Mr. Bauer. I've already given up, at least in terms of my plan but you and yours will gain nothing else from me." Sprawled on top of the younger man, covering his name on his uniform pocket, Bhakti suddenly tilted the small weapon upward, toward his own throat. "I will not suffer your justice, Mr. Bauer. I will not give you myself as a weapon to use against my people."

Jack crouched on the ground now, nevertheless remained frozen, realizing immediately that the slender spike in the hand of the angry man before him was more than it seemed. "What's in there?"

Kathirivan Bhakti merely smiled, a cold and pointed expression that betrayed his obsession as the answer left his mouth. "A last taste of home, for me, Mr. Bauer, a last taste of revenge on your country which will gain nothing from my short captivity. There's enough here to share with ten of you if you'd like but I must restrain myself and be sure that I deprive you of my capture."

Jack looked at the clear liquid now forming a tiny globe at the end of the small rod and back up at the queerly and completely calm gaze of the man pointing it at his own throat. "You're in control here," he said quietly, his exhaustion pushed aside by his focus. He couldn't have cared less if this man killed himself, save for the evidence that was trapped in his head, about the operation they had just undone and perhaps others. "We can make you a deal."

"You are an agent for your government, obviously a determined one; you what must happen. Cyanide for your side, cobra venom for mine. I must embrace my failure instead of my victory but the plan was the same. You see, Mr. Bauer, no matter your outcome, from the beginning, this was my end."

Chilled by more than the cold morning air, Jack Bauer remained still, fearing endangering the agent beneath the suicidal man as he plunged the small rod into his own throat. Convulsing and gurgling, he was dead seconds later, foam creeping out of his gaping mouth, his hands clenching at the air. Bauer came slowly to his feet, taking O'Brian in his arms and pulling her close to him as the CTU agent he had stopped from helping his partner now helped the other agent up from the ground next to the body. Bauer opened his eyes long enough to see the momentarily stunned EMTs shake themselves out of a stupor, lift the twisted body onto the gurney and roll it into the ambulance. Evidence to be collected, the injector remained on the ground, shining dully in the brightening daylight.

Bill Buchanan came to the scene a moment after the ambulance pulled away, supervising the new search of the woman who had been captured and her being shackled into the restraints in the back of a van. They were taking no chances of a repeat incident. The CTU director nodded at the driver to send him on his way and moved over to Jack and Chloe as they moved apart and turned their gaze out to the unchanging glimmer and ripple of the Pacific Ocean. The sight was calming, reminding them of their own exhaustion. Buchanan met their eyes with his own weary gaze. "We'll debrief day after tomorrow. I'm sure you two have a hell of a story to tell. Let's get you a ride home."

"They've got one."

Buchanan turned at the sound of the voice behind him and smiled at Cassandra Gibson as she crossed in front of him, handing her sister and Bauer each a blanket. She herded them down the hill before her, toward a police cruiser who doors were open and whose lights were flashing against the dawn. "Come one, you two, let's see how fast we can get you home. Time to abuse my authority on a personal whim."

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As Morris O'Brian would have grudgingly agreed, Gibson was as good as her word but home was not the suburban residence that Jack and Chloe now shared but her own apartment that was far closer. She pulled the cruiser to a stop in her parking slot and climbed out, opening up the back door and smiling at the two tangled, sleeping figures in the back seat. She roused them both gently, "Hey, you two, we're here. Sis, I might be able to carry you upstairs most of the time and Jack on a good day, but not either of you tonight. Come on."

Jack opened his eyes first and started slightly at the sight of the concrete wall through the windshield instead of his own driveway. Chloe woke up instantly at the jerk of his shoulder beneath her cheek and sat up, orienting herself after a moment and climbing out of the back of the police car with a weak but helpless burst of laughter. She offered a tired smile to Bauer as he slid over the seat to follow her. "Hey look, I'm getting out of a cop car and I haven't been arrested because of you."

Jack offered her a thin smile in return as he let the blanket drop from his shoulders and exited the car behind her. Gibson ushered them both into the elevator and opened the door of her apartment to the always overzealous joy of the huge German Shepard on the other side who knew her walk and her scent and the scrape of the key and hadn't made a sound. She lovingly shooed Todomachi off to his bed between two large fake fichus trees before he knocked either Bauer or her sister to the ground. The dog dispatched, Cassie turned to her other charges, her eyes going down to the matted stain on her sister's ragged dress, knowing all too well the texture of dried blood even on the black fabric. "I know you're both dead tired but you get in the shower and I'll find something for you to wear."

They took turns using the bathroom for other things first but when Bauer opened the door to the earth-tone tiled room he merely extended his hand and led O'Brian back inside. His shoes, socks, and shirt were gone already, the latter on the wooden towel rack, not thrown in the trash, in case it was needed for evidence. He removed his dress trousers and shorts. Naked himself now, he turned O'Brian away from him and gently tucked her hair aside, then pulled down the zipper of her dress, closing his eyes to block the sight of the bruises on her slender body, his breaths becoming tired, angry gasps as the blood-soaked garment fell to the dark tiles.

She turned as she stepped clear of it, pulling the gel cups off her breasts and tossing them in the sink then slid her arms around Bauer's waist, pressing herself against his warm flesh and welcoming the crinkling tickle of the fine hairs on his chest. Despite their state of undress, there was nothing sexual in their embrace, merely comfort and familiarity and the reassurance that the other was safe and alive and real to every possible sense. They stood in each other's arms long enough for fatigue to reassert itself over their relief. They moved apart and Chloe bent to remove her panties as Jack adjusted the streams of warm water to a gentler setting.

Chloe shut the glass door as she followed him in then reached for the washrag on the high shelf above the door, only to have Bauer take it from her from behind. He said nothing but she knew immediately it meant more to him to clean her body of the nightmare events of the past few hours than it did even to herself. Where many women who had so closely faced the threat of rape might have withdrawn from the touch of a man, she could think of nothing more healing that Jack Bauer's hands removing the soil of her attacker's touch and the blood she had spilled from her body. Her emotional walls now little more than dust, exhausted tears hid beneath the streams of warm water on her face as she watched him soap the cloth and drop to his knees to wash her legs and stomach where the blood had splattered when she had shattered her opponent's face. He stood up, his own legs shaking, and turned her around, gently rubbing the bruises on her back and then scrubbing her arms and hands and fingernails still caked with grease from the elevator shaft.

Jack sighed as he released her hand and started to go to his knees again, the rag just beginning to scrub her already pink thighs. Half-way down, she stopped him, lifting his chin and shaking her head. "It's okay. It's gone. It's gone. It's those jerks you'd never get the filth off of." She offered him a lopsided smile and took the rag from his hand as he unclenched it with effort. She lathered it up again and took each of his hands in her own, cleaning his as gently before letting her fingers drift across his chest soothingly and then lift up his right arm, wiping it down carefully and still, somewhere inside of her that she couldn't hush, enjoying the feel of the sleek muscle beneath the warm and wet flesh. She moved to his left arm, glancing up to see him following her every move with a tired but seemingly spellbound gaze.

Smiling beneath it, she raised his arm forward and wiped around the edged of the waterproof bandage. She guided him to turn around and he leaned, arms crossed beneath his head, against the shower wall as she drew the rag over the scarred flesh of his back. As the water from above washed away the sweet scented soap, she leaned forward and gently brushed her lips between his shoulder blades and then moved up to the back of his neck, kisses only meant to comfort and reassure. She stood and turned him back, kneeling as he had to wash his legs and stomach. Bauer closed his eyes as her hands traveled over his flaccid organs and gently gripped the shower rail, looking forward to another time and place when her touch would be more than maternal and caring.

They shut the water off and stood for a moment, the heat and steam having relaxed their muscles and left them even more desirous of a warm bed. Jack reached for the shower door and pulled it back, freezing for a moment as he looked down at the green robe and the maroon one on the closed lid of the commode. With a dark grin he took two towels off the shelf and wondered at what point they'd been when Cassie had popped her head and arm in the door to deliver them clothing.

Chloe looked at the robes as she toweled herself off, a half-ass smirk on her face. "At least she's a vice cop." Jack smiled at her thinly and pulled on the dark red robe that judging by the way it hung off of him and the lingering scent of a familiar cologne belonged to Curtis Manning. They left the bathroom to find two steaming plates of coffee, scrambled eggs, and toast on the small dining room table and a glare on Gibson's face that left no room for argument about their eating before heading to bed. "Sit down, both of you. You'll sleep even better if you have something in your stomachs."

With no capacity to fight left in either of them, they settled down before the meal obediently, listening to the sounds of clattering dishes coming from the kitchen and enough of Gibson's one-sided phone conversation to know that she was calling each of their various relatives to let them know the excitement was over from their point of view. Now it was up to the politicians and the military to sort out the rest. Jack realized ten minutes later he had cleaned the plate and taken two more helpings of everything from the serving dish before them before he felt full enough to sit back and catch the fact that Chloe was watching him eat with a dim smile, her own plate empty and her eyes reddened and heavy. He took one last draw on the coffee that had kept him awake enough to finish eating, wiped his mouth and kissed her.

They stood and retreated to the guest room, brushed by the branches of one of the smaller fake trees that dotted Gibson's apartment, climbing gratefully into the twin bed, and happily arranging themselves in the close quarters around each other, stopping when Gibson came into the room with a tray balanced in her hand. "Go on, you two, get settled but Jack get around here where I can get to your arm, okay?"

He knew that it wasn't really a question, and with a weary grimace turned over from where he'd been about to pull her sister close to him and ended up settling his head into the curve of her neck and draping his injured arm across her middle. "It's okay, Cass. They gave me something and bandaged it up."

Gibson waved him off as she dropped to one knee next to the bed. "They bandaged it. I'm gonna' fix it." Bauer offered her a frail smile and then closed his eyes but Chloe watched sleepily as her sister lifted his arm onto her shoulder then rolled back the sleeve of his borrowed robe. She ran some sort of liquid around the corners of the waterproof bandage that allowed her to remove it a few seconds later with only the barest of tugs. Beneath it, the long, wide shallow trench in his arm had begun to seal over and form a scab. From the tray on the floor, Cassie picked up a small bowl and a spoon and to Chloe's dulled puzzlement began to drizzle a murky green syrup onto it that was somehow both pungent and sweet. "What the hell is that?"

"The reason I don't have much in the way of scars. It's ground garlic to prevent infection, clove oil for the pain, and a very special powdered algae from Japan mixed in with a lot of Vitamin E to get the healing started. A couple weeks from now you won't even know it happened." She finished dripping the mixture into the wound, stroking Bauer's arm beneath it as she held it steady. Chloe smelled alcohol a moment later as Cassie used a bit of gauze to gently wipe from his skin the path of the adhesive of the prior bandage and the chemical she had used to gently remove it. She blew it dry and pressed a new bandage into place. "There you go, Kiddo, all done."

Bauer didn't react and Chloe turned her head to look down at him then glanced up at her sister. "Wow. When the EMT was working on…," her eyes fell with an instant of bitterness to the top of his head and then studied his face more intently before lifting to meet her sister's. "Never mind. I don't want to got there." Something else seized her mind outside of Bauer's torture at the hands of the Chinese, however. Her jaw suddenly trembled and she lifted her head away from Bauer's. "Cass, that guy you killed. He was, he would've ra---, would've… before he killed me." The tears leaked from her eyes suddenly and she fought to keep herself still for Bauer's sake. "Just don't blame yourself for killing him. You had to. I know you're a cop and you aren't supposed to kill anybody if you can help it but, that guy was soldier, a terrorist, not some street perp. If you'd backed off fighting him at all, he woulda' killed us both. If I could have killed him myself I would have."

Hot and stinging, Cassie felt the startled tears head down her own face and she reached up the cradle Chloe's face in one calloused hand, grateful for her intuition, grateful that they had found each other again. "I know that feeling, you know I do but I know I'm never gonna' feel it again. I might be a good cop, but I'm your big sister and that's a hell of a lot more important than any badge. You don't worry about me and if you want, I know a good Akido teacher. You don't have be big, you don't have to be strong, you just have to be smart and cool in a crisis… and I think you got that all down pat." Gibson leaned over and pulled her sister into a careful embrace, trying not to wake Bauer. She dropped back and with a slightly embarrassed grin saw that she had failed. "Sorry, Kiddo." She felt the blush warm her neck a second later as she imagined the embrace from his perspective. "Well, hell, I hope at least you enjoyed the view."

Bauer lifted his head enough to smile at her with tired fondness, "You were just being a good big sister."

Determined to move entirely away from Jack's inadvertent encounter with her cleavage, she nodded sagely and sat back on her heels, "Yeah, I am but you know what else I'd be? A really, really great sister-in-law." The spark of humor that rarely left her, reignited itself as she suddenly came to her feet and leaned over him running her fingers lightly over the back of his head. "I'm gonna' wake you up in about an hour, no griping."

Bauer nodded and turned his head up to receive the quick kiss on his temple before she vanished out of the room and shut the door. Chloe turned back from watching her leave with her lips twisted well past her nose to the right. "Obviously subtle isn't part of our gene pool."

"And that's one of the things about you I love the most." Bauer pulled himself up and despite her attempts to wipe away the tears when she felt him start to do so, he saw the last of the wet streaks glimmering on her face in the weak morning light making its way past the crack in the tan drapes. Ignoring the pain in his arm as he did so, he rolled up further and pulled her closer. "And being a brother-in-law again sounds perfectly fine to me."

Chloe O'Brian lay perfectly still for a moment, letting the words circle around her exhausted brain until the reassembled again in the right order and asserted themselves to her as such again. She opened her mouth and turned slowly where she lay in Bauer's arms, nothing coming out of it for a moment before she blinked and with all the energy she had left brought her mouth down on his with a joy strong enough to blot out the horror of the last few hours. She rolled on top of him carefully but quickly, a smile and far different tears now on her face, temporarily doing away with the exhaustion.

"I never brought it up. I never wanted to pressure you, not after Terri, and what happened to her being so awful and me being at CTU, too, but if you're ready, I guess now's a good time to tell you I am and I have been and you better not make me have to think about "always will be". Can we set a date right now?"

Off-guard, still exhausted, and now bewildered and touched to the point of mild delirium by her enthusiastic demand, Bauer took the easiest way out, one that betrayed he had been a married man before now. "Date? Right now? How about…uh… whenever you want?"

Disappointment clouded her face instantly. "No, Jack, I want something we look forward to that we did together, like our first decision about this together. I want you to be part of this!"

Smiling, still dazed, he arched his neck up to kiss her forehead, "I'm part of you. I will be… whatever gets decided."

Chloe huffed against him, her fingers tapping his nose in irritation. "I've heard of trick questions before, but that was a trick answer."

Bauer smiled, his eyes drifting back shut as her hand absently continued stroking his face now that it was in proximity. "But you know it's a true one. Honey, I don't care if you want to get married when we wake up but right now, I just need to -- to sl---." She watched as he drifted off again, his face inches from her own, a fading smile on his lips beneath her fingers. A grimace of happy determination worked itself into her face as she watched him sleep and felt the exhaustion reassert itself in her own body.

"Forget it, Jack. We're doing this together," she whispered to his unhearing ear, her fingers still tracing the worn lines of his still-boyish face. "The only thing I'm sure of right now… is where we're not having the reception."


End file.
